The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1892-04-24
THE sEAMY SIDE IN FICTION.

One OF the greatest needs of the liter
novelist with a sense of humor. Con-
tempOraneous story-writers, great and
small, seem almost entirely lacking in
that very desirable quality. Some Of
them have a marvellous faculty for de-
pictlng life on all its sides but that on
which the sun shines. Mrs. Humphry
Ward takes her hero, David Grieve,"
through a long and u~nmitlgated course
of theology and misery. An unpreju-
diced review of the book leads to the
inevitable conclusion that the only really
happy period of his life was during his
brief career Of sin in Paris-a conclusion
the author is far from wishing to create,
and which she would have avoided by
turning a glimmer of light upon the
somberness of his earlier and SUISSE
Quent experiences. Had she a proper
appreciation of the corporations that
are offered ever to the suffering in
actual life she would have omitted the
detailed description of Mrs. Grieve's
death from cancer. Cancer and like
horrible ills do af1ict human beings, but
they are not favorite subjects of con-
versatiOn among healthy minded people
outside of the medical profession. To
bring such an account into q novel is
uncalled for, eve by the canons of real
ism. But the novel is not realistic
in a true sense. No man, what
ever his woes, goes through a
long life without more mitigation
of his misery than Mrs. Ward has af-
forded David Grieve. 1t comes to him
in the by-play of daily life, in the
ludicrous incidents that come under
his eye, in the wit or the clOwnishness
of some companion. Without the power
to appreciate the humOr of such hap
penings, a living man under the weight
of woe heaped upon the unfortunate
David would have died long before his
time.
Another new novel of much power of
a certain kind is open to the same OBJ
lection. There is but a single CLEAN of
humOr from the first to the last chapter
of Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the Dur
bervilles." When Tees's tipsy and pow
erty- stricken father first heard of his
illustriOus descent he at Once as
sumed the title and called for a
carriage to convey him to his home,
though we'll ware that not a penny
was coming to him from his ances tors.
= I'll 4-1nke xh;. 81. A. 49,
lean reader as funny, but the subse-
quent seriousness of both D'Urberville
and the author, and the well-known
English worship of titles leads to a sus-
picion that the humOr of the situation
is unconscious. Poor Tess, in all her
weary way from her childhOod's squalid
home to the scaffold, encountered no
gayety mol any light-hearted people
willing olive simply for the sake of liv-
ing. Even her lover took life so SOL
emily that at their happiest time he
gave her more heart-ache than joy.
These two stories are but samples of
the fare that is furnished to a long
suffering public by modern novelists.
They all play the minor chords. Life,
as most people find 1t, has its full share
of gloom, but the gloom is not unbroken.
In order to secure the due share of enter
tainment that commoner people got
without price the kings of other days
provided themselves with court testers.
Early dramatic writer's recognized the
need of this element of humor and friv-
olity, and included a clown among their
characters or endowed a leading per-
sonage with wit. If the writer's of to-
day have not skill to picture the lights
as we'll as the shadows of life they
should study the early models and at
least give their readers the relief af-
forded by the clown.