toujours raison aux plus forts. Trop fière et trop pure pour accepter certains marchés, elle es-saye de lutter par le travail. On l'a vue entrer, comme ouvrière, dans un atelier de modes, à New-York, mais ses doigts, façonnés à des la-beurs inutiles, étaient inaptes à toute besognes effective : elle ne put réussir à coudre conve-nablement des plumes et des fleurs sur les chapeaux de ses anciennes rivales. Désormais réduits à l'ingrate condition d'idole sans ado-rateurs et d'ouvrière sans ouvrage, Lily est rateurs et d'ouvrière sans ouvrage. Lily est morte, par accident, ayant doublé, un soir, la dose de chloral qu'elle prenait pour combattre ses cruelles insomnies — elle a fermé pour toujours ses beaux yeux de pervenche au mo-ment où l'amitié amoureuse de l'avocat Selden allait peut-être lui révéler le véritable sens de la vie...

Arrêtons-nous, en terminant, devant cette honnête et reposante figure de M. Selden. Ce-lui-là, ce n'est pas un fêtard effréné, ni un snob extravagant, ni un joueur, ni un cabotin. Ses affaires ne sont point mystérieuses, et ses plaisirs ne sont pas insensés. Il exerce, au su et au vu de tout le monde, une profession classée et dont les gains ne sont pas illicites. Il sait vivre tranquillement, confortablement de ce qu'il gagne et ne désire rien au delà d'un bonheur conforme à la raison. Il ne cherche pas à jeter de la poudre aux yeux des gens ni à prendre, comme certains caissiers au nied léger, la pou-

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versities, and always with the deepest interest. Five years earlier he was knighted by Queen Victoria—an extraordinary compliment to a profession which was so long under the social ban.

It is easy and natural in the first hour of the passage of so great a master from the field of life to overrate his genius as an actor. That he had genius will not be denied even by those who were most critical of his performances; but that he belongs in the succession of great actors with Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, Kean, is doubtful. It was as a dramatic artist that Irving attained a place in which he may be said to stand alone on the English-speaking stage. Booth certainly surpassed him in many important qualities as an actor; but in the completeness of his conception of a play, the thoroughness with which he staged, dressed, voiced, and acted it, he was incomparably beyond Booth or any other actor of his time. In subtlety, intensity, a certain power of picturesque representation, he stood almost alone. In almost every part there was some moment when he thrilled his auditors, but his highest inspirations were uncertain; and while he always commanded the deepest attention, he did not always make his auditors forget themselves.

His pre-eminence was due to a combination of high character, unusual intellectual quality, and artistic gifts of a rare order. He was not only one of the foremost actors of his time, but he was also the foremost representative of the drama. It has often happened in the theater, as in painting, sculpture, and literature, that a man has been an admirable artist without the ability to master and formulate the principles of his craft, to stand in a large way as its interpreter and representative. To the whole English-speaking world Sir Henry Irving stood for the drama in its highest estate at a time when the stage had become frivolous, vulgar, and sometimes indecent. In an epoch when the theater was largely a commercial enterprise and a commercial enterprise only, Irving stood for the drama as one of the great arts of human expression. He brought to his work a mind of unusual tenacity and force. He was a tireless student,

an admirable writer, and a deeply interesting speaker. A man of striking personality in appearance, bearing, and voice, he never appeared on any public occasion without personifying to the eye, to the imagination, and to the intellect the very best traditions of his profession. His penetration and his energy were shown in the great number of difficult parts which he memorized and interpreted; his intelligence and literary skill were seen at their best in his occasional discourses on the stage. No more valuable contribution to the subject of the authorship of the Shakespearean plays has been made than his address on Shakespeare as a playwright delivered at Princeton several years ago. Of his warm-heartedness, his unfailing kindness, his loyalty to his friends, his helpfulness to men less fortunate than himself in his own profession, there has always been abundant evidence. His death robs the stage of to-day of its most dignified and impressive personality, and the English-speaking world is made poorer by the passage out of life of a man who interpreted a great art on its very highest level.

## A Notable Novel

Mrs. Wharton's latest story, "The House of Mirth," appears opportunely at the moment when some critics of the academic type are agreed that literature is an extinct force in American life, and that the noble art of fiction has degenerated into the profitable pastime of telling entertaining stories for frivolous-minded purchasers. It rises at once and with the effortless power of a true work of art into the region of clear instinct, open-minded intelligence, and dramatic feeling, in which novels of the first order are conceived and fashioned. It justifies itself as a piece of expert workmanship. It would be difficult to find a carelessly written sentence, an obscure phrase, a halting paragraph, in the text of the book. There are passages which might be omitted without loss to the dramatic completeness of the story, but the passages which could be condensed are few. The thoroughness of structure which binds the chapters by the logic of

1905]

A Notable Novel

life not less firmly than by the order of
events is sustained by a selective power
in the use of words which suggests
Flaubert's method without conveying any
sense of labor. The story is the prod-
uct of the most carefully calculated, the
most skillfully handled, artistic values
and effects; but the workmanship is the
manner, not the substance, of the novel.

Behind a piece of work so happily
combining spontaneity, divination, and
scrupulous exactness of touch there
always lies an apprenticeship; and in
the light of this really notable achieve-
ment it is interesting to trace the stages
by which a highly cultivated and witty
woman has passed out of what may be
called the academic stage into the region
of creative art. There has been a note
of prophecy in Mrs. Wharton's work
from the beginning; the hint and some-
times the clear disclosure, in her earlier
stories, of the novelist by the gift of God
and the grace of nature, as well as by
deliberate intention and exacting prepa-
ration. Such stories as "The Descent
of Man," "The Reckoning," and "Sanc-
tuary" predicted the deep human feeling,
the decisive insight, the moral grasp, the
dramatic energy, which lift "The House
of Mirth" to a very high plane of ar-
tistic achievement. There were other
stories from the same hand which lacked
this touch of divination, this breath of
the higher life. They were admirably
written, immensely clever, delightfully
witty; but they were not deeply human-
ized; they lacked the impetus of the
inevitable. "The Valley of Decision"
was a work of a very high order of talent,
but it lacked the impulse of genius; it
never escaped from the delicately trained
hand of its fashioner and fulfilled its own
destiny in its own way. It was an elab-
orate and striking academic exercise; it
was not a piece of original literature.

"The House of Mirth" marks the
transition in Mrs. Wharton's career from
the region of cultivated tastes and skill
to that of free, direct, individual crea-
tion; she has often stood on the thresh-
hold of life; now she has entered into
its tragic and mysterious secrets. To
say that this story is far and away the
best novel of society written by an
American is to give it pre-eminence in

a very small class; for the society novel,
in the strict sense of the term, has never
laid hold of the imagination of the writ-
ers of a country engrossed in settling the
more pressing problems of life. There
have been stories, like "Unleavened
Bread," which have dealt strongly with
women shaped by new social conditions
and unaccustomed social environments;
but the attempts to draw pictures of so-
siety apart from deeper and more com-
pelling interests have not been many, nor
have they been successful. Mr. Warner's
"Golden House" and "That Fortune"
were the work of an accomplished writer,
but not of a born novelist.

Mrs. Wharton knows at first hand the
world she describes, and her story is
free from those exaggerations, misplaced
values, and happy-go-lucky descriptions
of society life which make the great ma-
jority of so-called society novels cheap
imitations. "The House of Mirth" gains
immensely by reason of its moderation,
firm handling of the facts, discriminating
emphasis, and freedom from didacticism.
Mrs. Wharton has escaped the danger of
setting up moral sign-posts on the road,
and has given her novel a concentrated
and tragic moral significance.

For "The House of Mirth" is deeply
moralized because it is deeply human-
ized; it is impossible to touch life at
first hand without saturating fiction with
the moral element; for morality, as Mr.
Morley says, is not *in* the nature of
things; it *is* the nature of things. "Père
Goriot," "Madame Bovary," "Anna
Karénina," "Vanity Fair," "Adam Bede,"
"The Scarlet Letter," must be counted
great human documents, not because
they set out to be text-books of charac-
ter, but because they touched the very
sources of life. From its title to its clos-
ing paragraph "The House of Mirth"
is a judgment as searching, penetrating,
relentless as life itself; and yet it never
for a moment ceases to be a story of
absorbing interest. No tract for the
times could have been more scathing
and opportune; but no novel of the hour
is farther removed from the didactic
mood and manner. The kind of society
which it describes with merciless veracity
has existed in every generation, and is
to be found in every city. The story is

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The Outlook

[21 October

laid in New York, but it has been told
again and again of Rome, Paris, Lon-
don, and it might be told of Boston,
Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco.
Wherever men and women attempt to
organize life for the sole purpose of
pleasure, the terrible sag of society
toward vulgarity and corruption inevi-
tably shows itself. No fortunate condi-
tions of birth and breeding can conceal
the fact that a fast society is always a
vulgar society. Human relations and
intercourse can be kept sweet and whole-
some only by generous aims and inter-
ests; without religion, art, literature,
music, society always degenerates. Sum-
ming up a scandal which involved a
number of people prominent in English
society a few years ago, the London
"Spectator" said that the painful fea-
ture of the disclosures in the courts had
not been that the people concerned were
immoral, but that their amusements were
so cheap, their interests so few and
vapid, their life so insufferably stupid;
and an old noblewoman of the highest
standing, referring to the same scandal,
asked: "Why do they call us the upper
class? We seem to be the lowest class."

Some critics and readers will insist
that Mrs. Wharton has described soci-
ety as a whole. She has done noth-
ing of the kind; she has made a first-
hand study of a section of society
which is always in evidence in every
large community, and which is the
inevitable result of leisure and wealth
without cultivated tastes and generous
aims. It is possible that the dramatic
effect of the novel might have been
heightened if a few men and women of
a different and finer type had been
introduced; for every one in the story
is vulgar, heartless, uninteresting, or im-
moral. It is impossible to emphasize
the physical side of life, cut off religious
influences, break away from religious
habits, give up the reading of books,
make sport an occupation instead of a
recreation, without fertilizing the soil
out of which all manner of silliness,
inanity, vulgarity, and immorality grow.
The young woman, whatever her train-
ing and standing, who drinks cocktails,
smokes, plays cards for money, and in-
dulges in an occasional oath, may not

go to the bad, but she cannot escape
becoming coarse and vulgar. There may
be some excuse for the newly rich women
who lose their heads and imagine that
fast society is good society; but the dis-
couraging feature of the situation is the
fact that of late years this set has been
fed in Boston, New York, New Orleans,
and other cities by those whose tradi-
tions ought to have committed them to
refinement, dignity, sweetness, and high-
mindedness.

It is too soon to say that "The House
of Mirth" will take its place with the
great works of fiction; it is not too soon
to recognize its veracity, its power, its
art. It is an invigorating piece of work
from every point of view. Its popular-
ity will deliver timorous writers and
captious critics from the oft-exploded
tradition that superiority limits the read-
ing of a book and that uncompromising
truth-telling is resented by all save a
few choice spirits. Mrs. Wharton makes
no concession to the optimistic mood
which is supposed to dominate American
readers, and no evasion of the inexorable
logic of life. From the first chapter,
trifling indiscretions, careless compro-
mises, minor infidelities, begin to close
round Lily Bart and bind her hand and
foot until she becomes the victim of a
series of circumstances none of which
is really serious in itself, but which taken
together forge an iron chain of fate.
And to this achievement, which lies
within the reach of the novelist of genius
and of no other, Mrs. Wharton adds the
equally great achievement of exposing
the chief actor in her story to contamina-
tion at every turn, forcing compromise
after compromise upon her, lowering
her stage by stage in position and in her
own self-respect, and yet preserving a
core of integrity at the heart of her
nature and sending her out of life with
such compassion of comprehension that
not a hand can be raised to hurl a
stone. In the closing chapter Mrs.
Wharton rises to a height not only far
beyond the reach of her earlier work,
but where only a few among her con-
temporaries can find place with her. A
story of such integrity of insight and of
workmanship is an achievement of high
importance in American life.