The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-12-31
Society" Novels.
London World.l

London World.l
The novel OF society is the most popular lit
erary product of our time. Works of this sort
the public must have, and the circulating libra
ries are bound to supply them. They are
written, not to be artistic, but. commercial,
successes, and they have no more to do with
literature proper than bonnets or dress-im-
provers. There is no novelty in the institu-
ton; they were turned out by the score fifty
years since, as they will be fifty years hence.
Their manufacture is more prolific than ever,
because the class of readers to which they ap-
peal is more numerous. They are devoured by
a considerable section of the upper class, and
by thousands of the middle and the lower-mid-
die class. If we were not essentially nation
OF snobs, they would be without patrons; but,
seeing that snobbishness daily increases among
us, the field of their attraction is proportion
ately extended Between the society novels
of three or four decades ago, and the society
novels of to-day, there are certain differences.
The former were romantic; the latter are bald
ly realistic. They stand in much the same re-
lation to each other as do the 6ctions of Bull
wer and of Anthony Trollope. There was
much that was absurd, stilted and melodra-
sionally redeemed by the ingenuity of its plot,
its skill in dramatic construction, and the
smartness of its dialogue. These qualities are
not forthcoming in the Trolopean stories OF
everyday life. During the first half OF the
present century all society novelists more or
less attempted to emulate Bulwer; now their
highest ambition is to apply to their treatment
of the facts and personageS OF polite existence
the method of the great Anthony. 1t is seldom
that one encounters in these works any play OF
E FarWa nv npn ant
or felicity of phrase, The only substitute for
pungency and epigram are curt sentences,
more or less elliptcal, and not, as rule, too
slavishly obedient to the laws of grammar.
The duller and the more insipid are the drd-
nadtiS persona, the truer, 1t is argued. are they
to life, and the more the public like them. If
the dialogue is tame, and is only relieved from
commonplace by Scandalous innuendoeS, what
would you else? That is the way in which
society prattles in the drawing rooms of the
period. 1t is not, you are told, the business of
a novelist of society to represent people as bet
ter, wiser or wittier than they are. Let him
aim at mere transcript from experience, and
he will have done his duty.
Since the public will have it so, and 1t is
not the business of novelists to improve the
public taste, nothing is to be gained by COM
planning. AT the same time this inartistic
realism, nerveless and invertebrate as it is, is
deadly dull to all readers of any education or
taste. If these tictions are occasionally dipped
novels of superior kind, it is mainly because
they are animated by spirit of curiosity, and
wish to know who of their friends are taken
off, They like to identify the prototypes of
the precociously vicious young nobleman and
the abandoned young matron with well-known
of the period. There is just the
possibility that they may recognize the Inca
ments of their own character and career. The
more numerous and the less select public is
conscious of an analogous pleasure. 1t is de-
lightful to feel that under the guise of fiction
real facts of the most authentic nature are re-
lated; that the elopements and the horsewhip-
pings, the trials in the Divorce Court, and the
reve ations in the Bankruptcy Court, have
actually occurred The novel is literary
product which viii always be popular; and the
charm that story telling has is as great for the
old as for the young. Bat it may be seriously
doubted whether the mischief which novels OF
the sort now spoken of are calculated to do
can be counterbalanced by the amusement
they give.