The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-06-24
vINDIcATIoN FOR REALIsTs.

A coming society event. in Philadelphia
and Washington high life is the marriage
of the head of a great manufacturing
firm and the daughter of a man once
known in Missouri and Washington poll
tics. The expectant bridegroom has been
twice a widower and the bride-to-be has
a divorced husband, yet the papers which
announce the engagement speak admiring-
~ of the affair as romantic and as con-
tanning call the materials for a romance"
Now, whatever may be the literal definition
and derivation of the word romance as
found in the lexicons, good many people
though possibly all of them of an old
fashioned sort, are unable to apply it to
matrimonial episodes of the kind men,
TONED. To them genuine romance has
an element of poetry and fine sentiment
which seems to be totally lacking in this
case. 1t is possible that man who has
buried two wives may fall deeply in love
again and be ready to engage in all sorts
of daring adventures in behalf of number
three, and that a woman with a divorce
decree in her pocket may find unalloyed
happiness as the wife of another man; but
hearts of such a pair be reasonably re-
garded as poetical or romantic? If it can
be, If marriage is to be regarded as
interesting in proportion to the extent
and character of each participants previ-
GUS marital experience. then the pecuiari-
ties of recent popular fiction are fully &C
counted for. If the end-of- the-century con-
ception of romance is the marrying OF
people who have already been much mar
red or have perhaps INDUCED in alliances
not sanctioned by social convention, then
realistic move. of the day. This novel deals
with just such people and events and
draws their likeness with unsparing hand,
leaving not the thinnest veil over their
faults and foibles. and Disgusting with no
glamour of humor or pity or tender SYM
pathy with human weakness any detail of
their lives The novel that has a run
that everybody reads and talks about is
merely an elaboration of events briefly
told in newspapers which undertake to
give only the outlines. There is no inn
.agination about the making of such books;
they. are as devoid of poetry and romance
as these things were once understood as
are the daily market reports They are
vulgar and sordid and depressing. Virtue
may triumph in the end, but it is virtue
of such a drearily uninteresting sort that
no normally constituted reader can honest
lyr rejoice over it. The realism is not al
ways that of high life; far from it. A tale
which is just now having it's day in Lon
don relates the fortunes of a kitchen
maid in minute and realistic detail. She
an unhappy history. When. after a long
career in kitchens. in slums, among stable
men and horses. she is left, still toiling
creature. but in comparative peace, she
phere of the stable and OF the kitchen and
OF utter unmitigated commonplace is so
powerful that the lesson of the story Is
lost in spite of certain dramatic strength
it possesses. Dickens could do those things
better. He, too. entered the kitchen and
the stables. and his characters were OF
low life, but he invested them with
charm that endeared them and made them
immortal. His personages were not wholly
overcome by the burden of life that SO
weighs down the people of fiction now.
They sinned and suffered but they also
loved and were happy in their way; they
laughed and rejoiced. and ate and drank
and lived their lives in a simple human
way, taking the good with the bad as it
came. But Dickens IS dead, and no glim-
mer of humor eliminates the modern
realistic novel, not a vestige of poetry re-
| lieves its barrenness. Perhaps it is the
humor that is needed most, but If the end
of-the-century writer's have it not. whence
| is relief to come?
Washington is going through one of those