The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-19
Literary LightS and Shadohs
BY S. MAYS BALL.

MT. Robert Herrick, after a silence l of some three years, has broken loose
 from his literary seclusion sure enough,
 in his Together" published on July Il
 by the MacMillan company. The pub 1 fishers advise that MT. Herrick, in writing Together" has produced his
 most ambitious novel and further eX-
 plain that "in it he has largely stepped ! beyond the narrow formulas of the re- alistic novelistp He certainly has. In
 the first place Together" is the most | interesting novel MT. Herrick has writ i ten, way ahead of The Common Lot"
 and "The Memoirs of an American Cit | izen," and that Is saying a great deal. i In addition to the novel being very in | teresting (there Is none published re- gently that will hold the interest better, ] whatever else one may say about the I story) it is really thrilling at times.
 and one will feel that he simply must | finish the 595 pages, with 80 chapters
 dealing with 40-odd characters, before
 he takes up anything else, be it work or more reading. Five hundred and ninety-five seems rather heavy at tho | first glance, accustomed as we are to
 tn ose ''best sellers" that we can read
 in an evening. but there Is really not
 dull page in all of the 595 contained in Together" In a great many re-
 spects "Togeth err is quite unlike the
 majority of the present day novels; it is long story of free construction no, novelette, prepared for serialization in a magazine to be read on a short
 railway journey and forgotten at the destination, for the many different characters in the book actually live in the minds eye of the reader.
 Together" Is a novel of married lives as lived in America, not all mar ried lives, but surely great many. It is a fact generally understood that tho romance and the tragedy of life begin
 where the old-fashioned books like wise the best sellers" leave off namely: at the altar. The feelings and doings of two young people n
 the vagarles of love and courtship have small relation with life, real life and real passion as most of us see js and feel it. The drama of their ex-
 istence for the 10, 20 or 30 years after marriage is what has real signifcancs 2. Together" opens with a marriage cere- mony. What marriage means to ths American man with his absorption in business; what 1t means above all to the American woman with her domi hating influence in social life, her am btion and aspirations, her influence upon "the" man and men for good or bad, her struggle for self assertion and her often defeated longing for sen
  these are the themes in MT. Herrick' new novel.
 The book is absorbing all the way through. The reader will miss that light touch of humor absolutely nec- essary to carry through such themes and one we ought to expect from MT. Herrick he, who meeting a charming young lady in Chicago at dinner party some time ago, found this young 1o-1x erl,1 o1i to hn fop- tune of meeting novelist, and wished to show her Knowledge, particularly her familiarity with authors, poets and books, said to MT Herrick: q am
 really delighted to meet you, MT. Her rick, l have always so enjoyed your poetry; have you written anything
 iately-any lovely, sweet poems?" HefFick
 "John Lane," successful railroad
 man in the traffic department of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad" meets, falls in love with and marries isabelle Price" By a stretch of the allowances !,
 these two people are the hero and he roine of "Together." But there are 70 | many other characters in the book who are just as prominent as the Lanes that the novel might be said to
 be one without hero-there are really a number of them
 It is at the wedding of the Lanes thaA' the novel opens. They were married at Colonel Prices country place some dis tance ont of New York, and go at once 10 spend their honeymoon up in the coun- try, further into the Adirondacks. MT. Herrick has, his publishers intimate,
 stepped beyond the narrow confines of even the realists which in the language of the street lis going some" itself For in the descriptions that this author gives
 of this honeymoon and other honey
 moons, there is nothing like it in all presenu-day literature. It reads mighty true and very interesting, but MT Her | rick has put in a book things that this reviewer has never seen more startling
 anywhere outside of Boccacio's "De- l cameron" or '.Three Weeks" He judi | ciously-or was it his publishers-of | used lots of periods, long line of them, i either to show that something was cut
 out or forced out by it's own weight or naughtness. Together should not be
 put in the hands of the young person." | that is to say, not by anyone who thinks i or believes the young person is something ! or other that never knows what is gong
 on, when as a matter of fact they do. i It is the usual thing, however, to say { that such and such book Is not intended
 for the proverbial young person. when : in many cases the book might do some 1 SOOd-nOt in all cases, or course not, put 1 in some.
 The characters in "Together," most of
 them are unhappily married, with the l lone exceptions of Colonel Price and his | wife, who belonged, anyhow, to the "old 1 school" at least to the older generation, and fine old Steve Johnston and his most
 superior wife, Alice Johnston, cousin of Isabelle Price Lane. 1t is by bringing | in those ideal marriages that the author emphasizes the absolute dislocation of ill- l terests between Isabelle and John Lane; l between Margaret Poole and her husband; ! Rob Falkner and his pretty two-candc l power wife, Bessie; the Woodyards and
 so on MT. Herrick seemingly not afraid
 to write anything he thinks, puts into his l book most startling things to read-not 1 things new to any of us in real life but | things we pretend are not near to us,
 but insist they belong to the "other feI- ! low and his wife" Margaret Poole was i unhappily married to trifing, no ac- | count husband. Comes along Rob Falk- | ner unhappily married to Bessie. his | small-calibre wife-what do you reckon 1 Margaret and Robert, married to other l people, do? (this review could not print what they did, the managing editor ' swouldn't pass iD. MT. Herrick is most
 fnjust to southerner in his book, one A<*am Cairy; that Is to say, he is most
 lust when he says or makes a charac- 1 Ter say that all southerners carry pis-