Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-12-12
ON MODERN FICTION.
EOuida'' Relates g. Little Episode
from Real Life.
She Sharply CritIeises the "Fictitioss
Realism ef the Spioeless
Commonplace
letter to London Times


for the absolute truth of the narrative. In
deed, the little drama has been acted within
stones throw of my gates. a cantatrice of
obscure position had lover in a Genoese
gentleman, who not only had many claims
on her fidelity by reason of his devotion to
her, but also to the education which he had
given her when poor girl, and the iberality
which he had shown to her family; neverthe-
less, she betrayed this generous lover, and
carried on an intrigue with young noble of
the neighborhood, youth much younger
than herself and very rich. For some time
the Genoese gentleman, only able to visit her
at intervals in the Tuscan village where 81
lived, was without much difficulty deceived,
and when he did see the young noble, was
assured that he was a relation OF his be-
trothed At last, however, his suspicious
were fully aroused; instead of going back to
Genoa he one day unexpectedly returned and
had full proofs OF the worthlessness of his
siren.
He pursued his rival to his villa, and fail
ing TO provoke him to duel, swore that he
would kill him The carabineers interven-
ing, he found himself deprived of his just
vengeance, and, in the madness Of his des-
pair and agony, shot himself by the rivers
side, while his faithless mistress jeered at
him from her open window, in the lovely
stiffness of the mooulit September eve. This
was but few nights ago; he is not dead, but
still lies i'll great perilin a cottage near where
lie fell. The sympathy Of the whole rural
population is with this man, who at least
knew how to love and how to avenge his
honor The village populace were with
trouble prevented from iynching his worthless
coquette; and the veteran brigadier OF the
f.+n Fiji,
TINA d'amore. This is only one out of
thousand tragedies which yearly occur in
this, the home of Romeo and Juliet, where
love is not a dead letter. Why are not those
who can love and suffer thus as deserving of
portrayal in fiction as the epicene beings who
know no woes bit passing hysteria Of con-
science or disillusion before the melting Of a
f0ggy and impalpable ideal.
Because passion has never touched with its
fire and It's glory the prim life of the aesthetic
prig OF the rotund Philistine, it is not for
that reason persisted off the face Of the earth.
Il exists in the same force and the same
favor as in the days Of OJhello and Stradella;
and, [ confess, seems to me much more fifty
a subject Of the novelist or the dramatist
than the fictitious realism" Of the spineless
commonplace. After all, there is no more
vivid reality than love. The Genoese lover
lying here now, shot through the chest by his
own hand because his generous faith had been
deceived by a heartless mistress, is every
whit as legitimate centre Of interest as An
thony Trollopes gossiping bishops or Henry
James heroines perplexed by plethora OF a
paucity of proposals.
I remember when George Lawrence was
told that the end Of ''Sword and Gown" was
improbable. He answered: :" Improbables
Oh, very likely; only you see, it was true"
The eternal sentiment is as real as the in
finite prosaic. l believe am sometimes ac-
cused Of writing fairy stories," but is not
life itself very often a fairy story, if too
| often, alas! one in which the evil genius pre-
ponderates, and the wishing cap is foolishly
used by the unwise? To some of US, at least,
a dreary and insipid story of an uneventful
and unimpassioned life seems much more
unreal d. e.. unlike our own experiences
| than the most -omantic narrative conceived
| by the widest fancy. To many of us-to
myself, l confess, among the number-the
| world seems marvellous union of tragedy
and comedy, which run side by side like twin
children like "web Of Tyrian looms" with
the gold threads crossing and recrossing on
the dusky purple of its intricate neshes.
The amorous, magnificent, heroic life of
Skobelef would, NO doubt, seem incredible to
| the London litterateur, with his prim donles-
| ticities bound up in a duodecimo suburban
villa, papered by Morris, or the rural clergy
man solemnly pacing his treadmill of weekly
monotonies. At this moment, fighting for
the French flag at Tonquin, is a young man,
the fame of whose nom de plume (were L to
give it here you would at once recognize as
that of one of the masters of French fiction
-,
and an admirable artist, and he may very
likely die in a barborous country las Henri
Riviere died. burying with him his genius, his
youth and his marvellous and multtudinous
powers. Well, is not this man every whit as
real" as Mr.. Precisan Dulle, passing his life
between a civil service desk and house in
South Kensington, or Mr. Smalle Joker pen
ming his blameless fiction, which ''never
brings blush on the Cheek ETC., with his
six daughters playing lawn tennis in his back
garden, and his physical and mental vision
limited to the chimney pots?
No doubt, all the world over, character
creates circumstance; and the tortoise is not
to blame if it cannot leap only it need not
disbelieve in the greyhound and the horse.
No doubt adventures are to the adventurous
in the most extended sense of the word; and
romantic and brilliant lives viii not fall tc
the lot of the dull and the mediocre. But
such lives exist, nevertheless, and it is moi
true that a pale uniformity extends like 6
pail over the whole of the human race.
A novel is not necessarily any the more
} like real life because it is a story about moth
} ing, leading to nowhere, which might mean
der on through half century for any climax
that it ever reaches. z = cannot sup
pose that my own experiences can be wholly
exceptional ones, yet 1 have known very
handsome people, l have known very fin
characters, L have also known some very
wicked ones, and l have also known manI
circumstances so romantic that were they
described in fiction they would be ridiculet
: as exaggerated and impossible In real hf
there are condolences SO startling, mysterie
so singular, destinies so strange, that no wis
} novelist could venture to portray them TO
fear of making his work appear too bizarr
and too melodramatic That truth
stranger than felton, is round at every tlrl
in life. The world is not exclusively com
posed of the English middle class, varie'
With a few American young ladies. Wouli
il not be well if lecturers or reviewers, befor
calling everything which seems strange I
themselves unreal or unnatural, were visite
with wholesome doubt as TO whether
might not be their own experiences whic
: were limitaG}