The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-01-26

The society novel is one of the straws which
show which way the wind of the nineteenth
century blows The hero is moral rustic,
the ideal young man from the country, who
makes bus fortune through the easy accident
sof having it thrust upon him, and the heroine
is one of those exceptional daughters of wealth
who are as chaste as sandalwood and as sweet
AS clear conscience Its old men arc jaun-
diced rou9s, and its old women retired
.coquettes. All that is sacred about the one is
the tombstones sacred to their memory; and
in the other the only thing suggestive of
womanhoods lost Eden is the bird of para
disc plume found in their hats. The fashion
sable wife and husband may be near each
sother, but never next; like parallel lines they
ee1ist in constant proximity without the posi-
bility of coincidence. Infnitesimal fops,
brilliant in their parentage, enjoy, like mathe-
NAUTICAL points, position without magnitude,
and servo as contrast to the homespun vir-
tues and the hodden-gray virility Of the hero
lHoosier. The plot is as inextricable as
Broadway lock and almost as unnecessary.
The Bohemian shows his brazen features in
drawing room and boudoir, and the voice of
the sycophant is heard at the champagne. If,
as some one has said, pearls are the product of
10 parasite, there seems less harm in casting
them before swine; and society's sneak is
therefore excusable for strewing his best pearls
of fattery before on aristocracy Of Goldfish and
.shoddy.
The writer of the society novel is in the
same box with the writer Of the society play.
His contemporaneous human interest is an
interest which depends upon gloss and var
,nish, the superfcialities and accidents of life,
with none of its vital and permanent essen
'tials. He uses society like ON Australian
cherry, the stone of which grows outside the
fruit, and offers us the pulp of existence with
the kernel thrown away. The latest instance
of this sort of handling is to be found in DR..
Mayors new fiction, entitled ''Never Again
a book which has been received with a great
show of interest and which is as uneven and
disappointing in its treatment as it is incon-
:gruous in its name. In more than one quar-
ter it has been hailed as the society novel of
the period With few exceptions the minor
critics have clapped their hands in one &C
claim, and congratulated the author upon his
having held, if not the mirror up to nature,
at least the hand-glass up to convention. Here
Ito quote from criticism) Fifth avenue finds
herself stabbed, and Murray Hill writhes be-
meath satfre's perforating scorn. Here, NOR
ally speaking, the daughters Of music are laid
low, and the sons of fashion stripped as naked
as Samaria and Jerusalem. Here the gold foil
is scraped from La Jeunesse Doree, and, like the
'Chinaman's unpropitious god, the deity we
name Fashionable Life is knocked between
the eyes and beaten with many stripes.
While we are as willing as any one else to
admit DR.. Mayo is smarter and cleverer
at that this sort Of thing than nine out of ten
who essay it, it is impossible for candid in
telligence to yield him the praise Of having
written society novel in the best sense of
that term Society, even in the narrow mean
ing which DR.. Mayo and the contemporaneous
comedy writer's give to it, is, after all, COM
posed of men and women. The heart of hui
manity may be heard beating beneath its
rouge its rustic, its diamonds and its smirk.
If it sounds hollow it is because we do not rap
loudly enough to discover its tragic solidity It
is as full of significance as o. Centre street con-
fagration or Five Points tenement house.
Entomologists sometimes tell us Of the gor-
geous marvels of the insect world, of vast
colonies of resplendent mites, whose kingdom
is single leaf, which are born embroidered
in purple and fine linen beyond the sleight
of man, and, stroiling through golden and
grateful forests, lead instantaneous lives as
warm as fire and exquisite as dew We cannot
enter into the consciousness of creatures such
as these; but we may feel certain that it has
its tragedies as well as its delights. Most of
rus are too apt to consider the account as a
fairy tale, and it is in some such
way as this that those who know
absolutely nothing of what is termed
society are apt to add together its supposed
delights. To them it is painless, easy and vo-
luptuous, with no trouble beyond that which
comes of amiable competition. What our lite
nature needs is writer who shall not only un-
derstand this subject, but also possess the art
of so telling us about it as to interest and in
struct Dr. Mayo's novel is merely variega-
ton of ssRutledge." Its types are hackneyed,
its social pictures are snobbish, and while pre-
tending to probe to the heart of things it stops
at the clavicle. It creates nothing and indi-
vidualizes nothing The writer Of this class
gives us, not the root and branch of society,
but the petal and pollen of wealth and fashion,
the corolla and corona of etiquette and style
Instead of feeling the pulse Of mankind he re-
quests La Mode to put out her tongue. That he
says many clever things, that he is to GER
tain extent conscientious, that he might do
much moro valuable work, that he is fire.
quently nice and happy in his epithets and
roida thu Fra nod