The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-09-08
MURDER AS A FINE ART
THE REAL ASSASSIN AND THE NOV
ELIsTs' CREATION.

Hill Murderer.
From the New York Advertiser.
In the old tragedies bloodshed was
never obtrusive. When there was an in
convenient and distasteful character to
be disposed of, the business was always
done in the little cul de sac behind the
house, the affair being explained TO the
audience in polished and rhetorical Alex
andrlnes. This was thought fitting to the
dignity OF the tragic muse, and while i'm
posing many limitations on the play
wright, encouraged his propensity for
making bad rhymes
The school of American writer's, which
looks to Mr. Howells as its head, has
gone even farther; not merely keeping
the tragic element in the background, bur
wishing to eliminate 1t as a factor in nc
ton, and almost denying its existence in
human life. The attitude OF Mr.. Howells
himself toward strong passion reminds
one OF Fiedings old lady in the stage
coach when Joseph Andrews, after his un-
happy encounter with the highwayman,
is found unconscious by the roadside.
"Oh, fee" she says, the creature is all
naked and bloody-I vow and protest.
have never seen a man without his coat
before"
But in spite of this gospel Of the com
monplace, which Is being preached broad
cast by Mr. Howells and his disciples, il
seems as if the fine old stock situations
and complications which have so lone
/ served to amuse and terrify readers were
destined to outlive the so-called realistic
tendencies of to-day.
A healthy reaction Is already apparent
and the long novel of seven or eight hun
dred pages, with plenty of rousing action
and dialogue and a well-conceived plot
may be as fashionable a decade hence as
it was in the days when Martin Chuzzlewit
and the Count OF Monte Christie were given
to literature.
The assassin in fiction has always been
TO n certain extent conventional being
He is either mysterious of else a bury
ruffian. A Jonas Chuzzelwit or a Skies
The object of his presence is TO provoke
a thrill, and the novelist finds it more
profitable to lay on his colors thickly than
to mix his paints and use the brush too
finely.
The art Of assassination, which in hui
man life possesses boundless possibilities,
is narrowed and limited by the exigencies
of the drama and the novel. The meter
of the playwright and the novelist is in
this respect memorable. They may bring
their characters to violent DEATH but Il
must be by shot or shell, or the poison
cup. All that is outre and bizarre in as
sassination must either be eliminated or,
as the fashion is, tinged with orientalism,
and when we find a man put out of the
way in an unconventional manner, we are
more than likely to find that the thread
of the mystery leads us back to the Rom
ayana.
The novelists of the early half of the CEN
fury were reader to step over the boun-
| daries and all of them whose works are
| destined to live, with the exception of
| Thackeray, treated the assassin and his
trade with marked Difference and atten-
| ton. Dickens novels abound in cut
| throats-more or less picturesque-though
why they are introduced, and why they
| perpetrate their CHASTITY crimes, it is not
always easy to say. OF Jonas Chuzzle-
/ wit 1t has been wisely said that "he Is
the most shadowy murderer in felton,"
and Monks Quilp and Ralph Nickleby are
creatures of the Same puzzling stamp.
There is hardly a book of Dickens
| which has not an assassination or trag-
| edy OF some kind, and inconvenient per-
| sonages are generally thrust out of life
| in a grotesque and remarkable manner,
/ Carker is crushed and torn by the rush
| of the locomotive; Quilp is drowned, Skies
| neck is broken by the rope meant for his
| escape, Bradley Headstone and his enemy
| go together to the bottom Of the canal
while the mysterious Krook in "Bleak
| House" falls a victim to spontaneous
combustion. OF his assassinations, Nam
| cy's head is crushed in by Skies club,
| Lawyer Tulkinghorn is shot at midnight
| NJ lie Marquis, in the Tale of Two Cit
les" is found stabbed to the heart; Sir
| John Chester alone dies sword in hand,
| like a gentleman.
Bulwer's cutthroats like Byron's, are
marvels of good breeding and valor while
the assassins that are sprinkled profusely
| through the pages of Ainsworth and
| James are equally mysterious and impos-
sible
Dumas has given us some fine speci-
| mems of the race, but they all partake OF
their creators prodigality, and seem to
| revel in generous carnage, and lust pro-
| digiously for blood. Dumas was bettor
at drawing a simple cutthroat than an
assassin, and his D'Artagnan snuffs out
a human life more calamity and amiabiy
| than any hero in fiction. Sues assassins
are wild animals, bent upon turning soci-
ETY. into an abattoir. The Mysteries of
Paris and lie Juif Errant are conceptions
as horrible as Victor Hugos "Lhomme
qui Rit." The Englishman who follows
the menagerie over Europe to see the an
imals devour their trainer is a triumph OF
morbid imagination.
Ponson de Tarrail, whose works are
practically unknown in this country. drew
out of secret murder dramatic effects Of
which his contemporaries never dreamed
OF him de Goncourt once said: There
is but on man of genius among us-he
Is Ponson de Terrail Nobody handles
assassination as he does-he is the
Shakespeare of secret murder"
The ingenious author of the Barber OF
Paris" The Man With Three Pair or
Breeches," IN. Martins Jackass"-the
list is some fifty or sixty volumes long
has given us some fine tragic situations
Young writers who affect to study to adj
vantage the methods of Flaubert and
| Maupassant, and acquire a smattering Of
Russian pessimism from Tolstoi and Tur-
genen, need not disdain to turn TO the
much talked OF but little read Charles
Paul de Kock, who for sparkling. witty
dialogue is second only to Dumas, and
who in Chaudoreille has given us a
comic creation that is absolutely Shake
| spearean.
But the assassin who struts or skulks
through the pages OF romance is not one
whit more striking than the real flesh and
blood article, and he has less magma
| tton Tharo bardtv haa, "a ,ri,., a.,