The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-07-31
SOME FEATURES OF ENGLISH FLO
TI0N.
BY HATTIE TYING GRIswoLD.

The extreme popularity of Rud-
yard Kipling, of Ian MacLaren and
Barrie, is partly due, no doubt, to the
intense WEAKNESS of the whole read
ing world of the usual type of English
fiction. The stock company of the
novel-the old lord, the heir, the VIC
ar, the curate, the old servants, the
family lawyer, the old dowagers and
the feeble minded young ladies have
become nauseous, and almost any
change of diet would have been well
come. The coarseness and rowdyism
of Kipling had new flavor, though
rather overdone for refined tastes. To
be sure he swears scarcely more than
Thackeray, yet with difference. For
low life he has no more taste, perhaps,
than Dickens, nor does he talk great
ly more about hard drinking and
long carousols.
This latter trait is the common
property, however. of almost all Eng
lish fiction. Sir Walter Besant not
only makes the heroine of All Sorts
and Conditions of Men, the daughter
and proprietor of a brewery, but he
advertises the beer throughout the
book, and makes the philanthropists,
who are working for the poor, hold
up as an ideal the time when all can
have good beer and plenty of it. He
places it in the same category as
bread. Dickens hits the teetotalers
hard raps many times also, and some
of his pages fairly reek with drink,
and many more with smoke. Thack-
cray is not far behind. The wine
drenches his pages, and you can
scarcely see for the smoke. Who
does not remember Give Newcomb
and his eternal cigar9" And War
rington, the best beloved, is hardly
mentioned but what his pipe is in
evidence. Pendennis is a good third;
in fact, all of his favorite heroes emit
an odor of tobacco.
Until latterly this has not been the
case with the best American fiction.
Although Julian Hawthorne says that
his father twas not a teetotaler any
more than he was an abolitionist or
thug" he had a refinement which
kept his pages clean and sweet. Of
course mention is made both of wine
and smoke, but his writings are not
saturated with either
Nor have any of our better writer's,
until recently, become infected with
this virus. Howells has fallen into
it somewhat of late, as have Richard
Harding Davis, and our Canadian
friend, Gilbert Parker. There is less
excuse for recent writer's in doing
this than for the older ones like Dick
ems and Thackeray.
English life, until the present time,
has hardly known protest against
the universal habit of drink, and
truthful picture of their time could
hardly have been drawn by novelists,
without frequent allusion to the uni
versal custom.
But it is poor time now, when the
protest is almost universal, for our
writer's to ape the custom of their ell
ders and betters. Nevertheless, the
hero of Gilbert Parker's late novel
The Last of the Lavillettes, does little
but cough and pour whisky down
his throat. This for SO good writer
as Parker is pity, and the story is
dramatic one, spite of this blemish.
1t is about time, too, that we de-
mand of writer's of English fiction
that they free their pages from the
too frequent description of the other
vices of their heroes. Scarcely one of
the old lords before mentioned, but
is described as a rake in his youth,
and many as not having fully recov-
cred in age. Lord Steyne is a prodi-
gious favorite with Thackeray, and
there are many others who are no
better than they should be. The
young men, too, SOW marvellous guam
titles of wild oats. Even so fine a
fellow as Lord Kew, in The New
combs, is described as being a very
prodigal son, and the Marquis of
Farintosh is rake of rakes, to say
nothing of that delightful English
gentleman, Barnes Newcomb. Even
George Eliot must give US Grand
court. But why particularize2 Any
reader of novels knows the type.
These men are the stock in trade of
most of the lesser writers, from Ouida
down. The worn out rowe, the re-
formed rake, the young man in the
midst of his amours, are they not fed
to us all dd Rdaseunl. Is it any
wonder that our young men are cYni-
cal and blase, and that women are
beginning to wonder if there be any
virtue among mena These constant
natfer-of-eourse descriptions of the