The Land of Contrasts Part 6

The princ.i.p.al characteristics of American journalism may be summed up in the word "enterprise." No one on earth is more fertile in expedients than an American editor, kept constantly to the collar by a sense of competing energies all around him. No trouble, or expense, or contrivance is spared in the collection of news; scarcely any item of interest is overlooked by the army of alert reporters day and night in the field. The old-world papers do not compete with those of the new in the matter of _quant.i.ty_ of news. But just here comes in one of the chief faults of the American journal, one of the besetting sins of the American people,--their well-known love of "bigness," their tendency to ask "How much?" rather than "Of what kind?" There is a lack of discrimination in the daily bill of fare served up by the American press that cannot but disgust the refined and tutored palate. It is only the boor who demands a savoury and a roast of equal bulk; it is only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal prize-fights or vapid "personals" as by important political information or literary criticism. There is undoubtedly a modic.u.m of truth in Matthew Arnold's sneer that American journals certainly supply news enough--but it is the news of the servants' hall. It is as if the helm were held rather by the active reporter than by the able editor. It is said that while there are eight editors to one reporter in Denmark, the proportion is exactly reversed in the United States.

The net of the ordinary American editor is at least as indiscriminating as that of the German historiographer: every detail is swept in, irrespective of its intrinsic value. The very end for which the newspaper avowedly exists is often defeated by the impossibility of finding out what is the important news of the day. The reporter prides himself on being able to "write up" the most intrinsically uninteresting and unimportant matter. The best American critics themselves agree on this point. Mr. Howells writes: "There are too many things brought together in which the reader can and should have no interest. The thousand and one petty incidents of the various casualties of life that are grouped together in newspaper columns are profitless expenditure of money and energy."

The culminating point of this aimless congeries of reading matter, good, bad, and indifferent, is attained in the Sunday editions of the larger papers. Nothing comes amiss to their endless columns: scandal, politics, crochet-patterns, bogus interviews, puerile hoaxes, highly seasoned police reports, exaggerations of every kind, records of miraculous cures, funny stories with comic cuts, society paragraphs, gossip about foreign royalties, personalities of every description. In fact, they form the very ragbag of journalism. An unreasonable pride is taken in their very bulk--as if forty pages _per se_ were better than one; as if the tons of garbage in the Sunday issue of the Gotham _Gasometer_ outweighed in any valuable sense the ten or twelve small pages of the Parisian _Temps_. Not but that there is a great deal of good matter in the Sunday papers. _Wer vieles bringt wird manchem etwas bringen_; and he who knows where to look for it will generally find some edible morsel in the hog-trough. It has been claimed that the Sunday papers of America correspond with the cheaper English magazines; and doubtless there is some truth in the a.s.sertion. The pretty little tale, the interesting note of popular science, or the able sketch of some contemporary political condition is, however, so hidden away amid a ma.s.s of feebly ill.u.s.trated and vulgarly written notes on sport, society, criminal reports, and personal interviews with the most evanescent of celebrities that one cannot but stand aghast at this terrible misuse of the powerful engine of the press. It is idle to contend that the newspaper, as a business undertaking, must supply this sort of thing to meet the demand for it. It is (or ought to be) the proud boast of the press that it leads and moulds public opinion, and undoubtedly journalism (like the theatre) is at least as much the cause as the effect of the depravity of public taste.

Enterprising stage-managers have before now proved that Shakespeare does _not_ spell ruin, and there are admirable journals in the United States which have shown themselves to be valuable properties without undue pandering to the frivolous or vicious side of the public instinct.[17]

A straw shows how the wind blows; let one item show the unfathomable gulf in questions of tone and taste that can subsist between a great American daily and its English counterparts. In the summer of 1895 an issue of one of the richest and most influential of American journals--a paper that such men as Mr. Cleveland and Mr. McKinley have to take account of--published under the heading "A Fortunate Find" a picture of two girls in bathing dress, talking by the edge of the sea.

One says to the other: "How did you manage your father? I thought he wouldn't let you come?" The answer is: "I caught him kissing the typewriter." It is, of course, perfectly inconceivable that any reputable British daily could descend to this depth of purposeless and odious vulgarity. If this be the style of humour desiderated, the Thunderer may take as a well-earned compliment the American sneer that "no joke appears in the London _Times_, save by accident." If another instance be wanted, take this: Major Calef, of Boston, officiated as marshal at the funeral of his friend, Gen. Francis Walker. In so doing he caught a cold, of which he died. An evening paper hereupon published a cartoon showing Major Calef walking arm in arm with Death at General Walker's funeral.

Americans are also apt to be proud of the number of their journals, and will tell you, with evident appreciation of the fact, that "nearly two thousand daily papers and fourteen thousand weeklies are published in the United States." Unfortunately the character of their local journals does not altogether warrant the inference as to American intelligence that you are expected to draw. Many of them consist largely of paragraphs such as the following, copied verbatim from an issue of the Plattsburg _Sentinel_ (September, 1888):

George Blanshard, of Champlain, an experienced prescription clerk and a graduate of the Albany School of Pharmacy, has accepted a position in Breed's drug-store at Malone.

Clerk Whitcomb, of the steamer "Maquam," has finished his season's work in the boat, and has resumed his studies at Burlington.

I admit that the interest of the readers of the _Sentinel_ in the doings of their friends Mr. Blanshard and Mr. Whitcomb is, perhaps, saner and healthier than that of the British sn.o.b in the fact that "Prince and Princess Christian walked in the gardens of Windsor Castle and afterwards drove out for an airing." But that is the utmost that can be said for the propagation of such utter vapidities; and the man who pays his five cents for the privilege of reading them can scarcely be said to produce a certificate of intelligence in so doing. If the exhibition of such intellectual feebleness were the worst charge that could be brought against the American newspaper, there would be little more to say; but, alas, "there are some among the so-called leading newspapers of which the influence is wholly pernicious because of the perverted intellectual ability with which they are conducted." (Prof.

Chas. E. Norton, in the _Forum_, February, 1896.)

The levity with which many--perhaps most--American journals treat subjects of serious importance is another unpleasant feature. They will talk of divorces as "matrimonial smash-ups," or enumerate them under the caption "Divorce Mill." Murders and fatal accidents are recorded with the same jocosity. Questions of international importance are handled as if the main purpose of the article was to show the writer's power of humour. Serious speeches and even sermons are reported in a vein of flippant jocularity. The same trait often obtrudes into the review of books of the first importance. The traditional "No case--abuse the plaintiff's attorney" is translated into "Can't understand or appreciate this--let's make fun of it."

By the best papers--and these are steadily multiplying--the "interview" is looked upon as a serious opportunity to obtain in a concise form the views of a person of greater or less eminence on subjects of which he is ent.i.tled to speak with authority. By the majority of journals, however, the interview is abused to an inordinate extent, both as regards the individual and the public. It is used as a vehicle for the cheapest forms of wit and the most personal attack or laudation. My own experience was that the interviewer put a series of pre-arranged questions to me, published those of my answers which met his own preconceptions, and invented appropriate subst.i.tutes for those he did not honour with his approval.

A Chicago reporter made me say that English ignorance of America was so dense that "a gentleman of considerable attainments asked me if Connecticut was not the capital of Pittsburgh and notable for its great Mormon temple,"--an elaborate combination due solely to his own active brain. The same ingenuous (and ingenious) youth caused me to invent "an erratic young Londoner, who packed his bag and started at once for any out-of-the-way country for which a new guide-book was published." Another, with equal lack of ground, committed me to the unpatriotic a.s.sertion that neither in Great Britain nor in any other part of Europe was there any scenery to compare with that of the United States. But perhaps the unkindest cut of all was that of the reporter at Was.h.i.+ngton who made me introduce my remarks by the fatuous expression "Methought"! Mr. E.A. Freeman was much amused by a reporter who said of him: "When he don't know a thing, he says he don't. When he does, he speaks as if he were certain of it." Mr. Freeman adds: "To the interviewer this way of action seemed a little strange, though he clearly approved of the eccentricity." This gentleman's mental att.i.tude, like his superiority to grammar, is, unfortunately, characteristic of hundreds of his colleagues on the American press.

The distinction between the editorial and reportorial functions of a newspaper are apt to be much less clearly defined in the United States than in England. The English reporter, as a rule, confines himself strictly to his report, which is made without bias. A Conservative speech is as accurately (though perhaps not as lengthily) reported in a Liberal paper as in one of its own colour. All comment or criticism is reserved for the editorial columns. This is by no means the case in America. Such an authority as the _Atlantic Monthly_ admits that wilful distortion is not infrequent: the reporter seems to consider it as part of his duty to amend the record in the interest of his own paper or party. The American reporter, in a word, may be more active-minded, more original, more amusing, than his English colleague; but he is seldom so accurate. This want of impartiality is another of the patent defects of the American daily press. It is a too unscrupulous partisan; it represents the ethics of the ward politician rather than the seeker after truth.

If restraint be a sign of power, then the American press is weak indeed. There is no reticence about it. Nothing is sacred to an American reporter; everything that can be in any sense regarded as an item of news is exposed to the full glare of publicity. It has come to be so widely taken for granted that one likes to see his name in the papers, that it is often difficult to make a lady or gentleman of the American press understand that you really prefer to have your family affairs left in the dusk of private life. The touching little story ent.i.tled "A Thanksgiving Breakfast," in _Harper's Magazine_ for November, 1895, records an experience that is almost a commonplace except as regards the unusually thin skin of the victim and the unusual delicacy and good feeling of the operator. The writer of an interesting article in the _Outlook_ (April 25, 1896), an admirable weekly paper published in New York, sums it up in a sentence: "It is no exaggeration to say that the wanton and unrestricted invasion of privacy by the modern press const.i.tutes in certain respects the most offensive form of tyranny which the world has ever known." The writer then narrates the following incident to ill.u.s.trate the length to which this invasion of domestic privacy is carried:

A cultivated and refined woman living in a boarding-house was so unfortunate as to awaken the admiration of a young man of unbalanced mind who was living under the same roof. He paid her attentions which were courteously but firmly declined. He wrote her letters which were at first acknowledged in the most formal way, and finally ignored. No woman could have been more circ.u.mspect and dignified. The young man preserved copies of his own letters, introduced the two or three brief and formal notes which he had received in reply, made a story of the incident, stole the photograph of the woman, enclosed his own photograph, mailed the whole matter to a New York newspaper, and committed suicide. The result was a two or three column report of the incident, with portraits of the unfortunate woman and the suicide, and an elaborate and startling exaggeration of the few inconspicuous, insignificant, and colorless facts from which the narrative was elaborated. That a refined woman in American society should be exposed to such a brutal invasion of her privacy as that which was committed in this case reflects upon every gentleman in the country.

No doubt, as the _Outlook_ goes on to show, the American people are themselves largely responsible for this att.i.tude of the press. They have as a whole not only less reverence than Europeans for the privacy of others, but also less resentment for the violation of their own privacy. The new democracy has resigned itself to the custom of living in gla.s.s houses and regards the desire to shroud one's personal life in mystery as one of the survivals of the dark ages. The newspaper personalities are largely "the result of the desperate desire of the new cla.s.ses, to whom democratic inst.i.tutions have given their first chance, to discover the way to _live_, in the wide social meaning of the word."

One regrettable result of the way in which the American papers turn liberty into license is that it actually deters many people from taking their share in public life. The fact that any public action is sure to bring down upon one's head a torrent of abuse or adulation, together with a microscopic investigation of one's most intimate affairs, is enough to give pause to all but the most resolute. Leading journals go incredible lengths in the way they speak of public men.

One of the best New York dailies dismissed Mr. Bryan as "a wretched, rattle-pated boy." Others constantly alluded to Mr. Cleveland as "His Corpulency." For weeks the New York _Sun_ published a portrait of President Hayes with the word FRAUD printed across the forehead.

Such competent observers as Mr. George W. Smalley (_Harper's Magazine_, July, 1898) bear testimony to the fact that the irresponsibility of the press has seriously diminished its influence for good. Thus he points out that "the combined and active support given by the American press to the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty weighed as nothing with the Senate." In recent mayoralty contests in New York and in Boston, almost the whole of the local press carried on vigorous but futile campaigns against the successful candidates.

Several public libraries and reading-rooms have actually put some of the leading journals in an Index Expurgatorius.[18]

The moral and intellectual defects of the American newspaper are reflected in its outward dress. Neither the paper nor the printing of a New York or Boston daily paper is so good as that of the great English dailies. American editors are apt to claim a good deal of credit for the ill.u.s.trations with which the pages of their journals are sprinkled; but a less justifiable claim for approbation was surely never filed. In nine cases out of ten the wood-cuts in an American paper are an insult to one's good taste and sense of propriety, and, indeed, form one of the chief reasons for cla.s.sing the American daily press as distinctly lower than that of England. The reason of this physical inferiority I do not pretend to explain. It is, however, a strange phenomenon in a country which produces the most beautiful monthly magazines in the world, and also holds its own in the paper, printing, and binding of its books. But, as Mr. Freeman remarks, the magazines and books of England and America are merely varieties of the same species, while the daily journals of the two countries belong to totally different orders. Many of the better papers are now beginning to give up ill.u.s.trations. A bill to prevent the insertion in newspapers of portraits without the consent of the portrayed was even brought before the New York Legislature. An exasperating feature of American newspapers, which seems to me to come also under the head of physical inferiority, is the practice of scattering an article over the whole of an issue. Thus, on reaching the foot of a column on page 1 we are more likely than not to be directed for its continuation on page 7 or 8. The reason of this is presumably the desire to have all the best goods in the window; _i.e._, all the most important head-lines on the front page; but the custom is a most annoying one to the reader.

It is frequently a.s.serted by Americans that their press is very largely controlled by capitalists, and that its columns are often venal. On such points as these I venture to make no a.s.sertion. To prove them would require either a special knowledge of the back-lobbies of journalism or so intimate an understanding of the working of American inst.i.tutions and the evolution of American character as to be able to decide definitely that no other explanation can be given of the source of such-and-such newspaper actions and att.i.tude. I confine myself to criticism on matters such as he who runs may read. It is, however, true that, contrary to the general spirit of the country, such questions as socialism and the labour movement seldom receive so fair and sympathetic treatment as in the English press.

So many of the journalists I met in the United States were men of high character, intelligence, and breeding that it may seem ungracious and exaggerated to say that American newspaper men as a cla.s.s seem to me distinctly inferior to the pressmen of Great Britain. But I believe this to be the case; and indeed a study of the journals of the two countries would alone warrant the inference. The trail of the reporter is over them all. Not that I, mindful of the implied practicability of the pa.s.sage of a needle's eye by a camel, believe it impossible for reporters to be gentlemen; but I do say that it is difficult for a reporter on the American system to preserve to the full that delicacy of respect for the mental privacy of others which we a.s.sociate with the idea of true gentlemanliness. Mr. Smalley, in a pa.s.sage controverting the general opinion that a journalist should always begin at the lowest rung of the ladder, admits that a modern reporter has often to approach people in a way that he will find it hard to reconcile with his own self-respect or the dignity of his profession.

The representative of the press whom one meets in English society and clubs is very apt to be a university graduate, distinguished from his academic colleagues, if at all, by his superior ability and address.

This is also true of many of the editorial writers of large American journals; but side by side with these will be found a large number of men who have worked their way up from the pettiest kind of reporting, and who have not had the advantage, at the most impressionable period of their career, of a.s.sociating with the best-mannered men of the time. It is, of course, highly honourable to American society and to themselves that they have and take the opportunity of advancement, but the fact remains patent in their slipshod style and the faulty grammar of their writings, and in their vulgar familiarity of manner. It has been a.s.serted that journalism in America is not a profession, and is "subject to none of the conditions that would ent.i.tle it to the name.

There are no recognised rules of conduct for its members, and no tribunal to enforce them if there were."

The startling contrasts in America which suggested the t.i.tle of the present volume are, of course, well in evidence in the American press.

Not only are there many papers which are eminently un.o.bnoxious to the charges brought against the American press generally, but different parts of the same paper often seem as if they were products of totally different spheres (or, at any rate, hemispheres). The "editorials," or leaders, are sometimes couched in a form of which the scholarly restraint, chasteness of style, moral dignity, and intellectual force would do honour to the best possible of papers in the best possible of worlds, while several columns on the front page of the same issue are occupied by an ill.u.s.trated account of a prize-fight, in which the most pointless and disgusting slang, such as "tapping his claret" and "bunging his peepers," is used with blood-curdling frequency.

In a paper that lies before me as I write, something like a dozen columns are devoted to a detailed account of the great contest between John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett (Sept. 7, 1892), while the princ.i.p.al place on the editorial page (but only _one_ column) is occupied by a well-written and most appreciative article on the Quaker poet Whittier, who had gone to his long home just about the time the pugilists were battering each other at New Orleans.[19]

It would give a false impression of American journalism as a whole if we left the question here. While American newspapers certainly exemplify many of the worst sides of democracy and much of the rawness of a new country, it would be folly to deny that they also partic.i.p.ate in the attendant virtues of both the one and the other. The same inspiring sense of largeness and freedom that we meet in other American inst.i.tutions is also represented in the press: the same absence of slavish deference to effete authority, the same openness of opportunity, the same freshness of outlook, the same spontaneity of expression, the same readiness in windbag-piercing, the same admiration for talent in whatever field displayed. The time-honoured alliance of dulness and respectability has had its decree _nisi_ from the American press. Several of our own journalists have had the wit to see and the energy to adopt the best feature of the American style; and the result has been a distinct advance in the raciness and readableness of some of our best-known journals. The "Americanisation of the British press" is no bugbear to stand in awe of, if only it be carried on with good sense and discrimination. We can most advantageously exchange lessons of sobriety and restraint for suggestions of candour, humour, and point; and America's share in the form of the ideal English reading journal of the future will possibly not be the smaller.

The _Nation_, a political and literary weekly, and the religious or semi-religious weekly journals like the _Outlook_ and the _Independent_, are superior to anything we have in the same _genre_; and the high-water mark even of the daily political press, though not very often attained, is perhaps almost on a level with the best in Europe. Richard Grant White found a richness in the English papers, due to the far-reaching interests of the British empire, which made all other journalism seem tame and narrow; but perhaps he would now-a-days hesitate to attach this stigma to the best journals of New York. And, in conclusion, we must not forget that American papers have often lent all their energies to the champions.h.i.+p of n.o.ble causes, ranging from the enthusiastic anti-slavery agitation of the New York _Tribune_, under Horace Greeley, down to the crusade against body-s.n.a.t.c.hing, successfully carried on by the _Press_ of Philadelphia, and to the agitation in favour of the horses of the Fifth-avenue stages so pertinaciously fomented by the humorous journal _Life_.

I cannot resist the temptation of printing part of a notice of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States," which will show the almost incredible lengths to which the less cultured scribes of the American press carry their "spread-eagleism" even now. It is from a journal published in a city of nearly 100,000 inhabitants, the capital (though not the largest city) of one of the most important States in the Union. It is headed "A Blind Guide:"

It is simply incomprehensible that an author of so much literary merit in his preparation of guides to European countries should make the absolute failure that he has in the building of a guide to the United States intended for European travellers. As a guide, it is a monstrosity, fully as deceptive and misleading in its aims as it is ridiculous and unworthy in its criticisms of our people, our customs and habitations. It is not a guide in any sense, but a general tirade of abuse of Americans and their country; a compilation of mean, unfair statements; of presumed facts that are a tissue of transparent falsehoods; of comparisons with Europe and Europeans that are odius (_sic_). Baedeker sees very little to commend in America, but a great deal to criticise, and warns Europeans coming to this country that they must use discretion if they expect to escape the machinations of our people and the snares with which they will be surrounded. Any person who has ever travelled in Europe and America will concede that in the United States the tourist enjoys better advantages in every way than he can in Europe. Our hotels possess by far better accommodations, and none of that "flunkeyism" which causes Americans to smile as they witness it on arrival. Our railway service is superior in every respect to that of Europe. As regards civility to strangers the Americans are unequalled on the face of the globe. In antiquity Europe excels; but in natural picturesque scenery the majestic grandeur of our West is so far ahead of anything to be seen in Europe, even in beautiful Switzerland, that the alien beholder cannot but express wonder and admiration. Baedeker has made a mistake in his attempt to underrate America and Americans, its inst.i.tutions and their customs. True, our nation is in a crude state as compared with the old monarchies of Europe, but in enterprise, business qualifications, politeness, literary and scientific attainments, and in fact all the essential qualities that tend to const.i.tute a people and a country, America is away in the advance of staid, old foggy (_sic_) Europe, and Baedeker will find much difficulty to eradicate that all-important fact.

I hasten to a.s.sure my English readers that this is no fair sample of transatlantic journalism, and that nine out of ten of my American acquaintances would deem it as unique a literary specimen as they would. At the same time I may remind my American readers that the scutcheon of American journalism is not so bright as it might be while blots of this kind occur on it, and that it is the blatancy of Americans of this type that tends to give currency to the distorted opinion of Uncle Sam that prevails so widely in Europe.

Perhaps I shall not be misunderstood if I say that this review is by no means typical of the notice taken by American journals of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States." Whatever other defects were found in it, reviewers were almost unanimous in p.r.o.nouncing it fair and free from prejudice. Indeed, the reception of the Handbook by the American press was so much more friendly than I had any right to expect that it has made me feel some qualms in writing this chapter of criticism, while it must certainly relieve me of any possible charge of a wish to retaliate.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Writing of theatrical managers, the _Century_ (November, 1895) says: "One of the greatest obstacles in the way of reform is the inability of these same men to discern the trend of intelligent, to say nothing of cultivated, public opinion, or to inform themselves of the existence of the widespread craving for higher and better entertainment."

[18] The so-called "Yellow Press" has reached such an extreme of extravagance during the progress of the Spanish-American war that it may be hoped that it has at last dug its own grave. On the other hand, many journals were perceptibly steadied by having so vital an issue to occupy their columns, and the tone of a large section of the press was distinctly creditable.

[19] It may be doubted, however, whether any American author of similar standing would devote a chapter to the loathsome details of the prize-ring, as Mr. George Meredith does in his novel "The Amazing Marriage."

X

Some Literary Straws

By far the most popular novel of the London season of 1894 was "The Manxman," by Mr. Hall Caine. Its sale is said to have reached a fabulous number of thousands of copies, and the testimony of the public press and the circulating library is unanimous as to the supremacy of its vogue. In the United States the favourite book of the year was Mr. George Du Maurier's "Trilby." To the practical and prosaic evidence of the eager purchase of half a million copies we have to add the more romantic homage of the new Western towns (Trilbyville!) and patent bug exterminators named after the heroine.

It may, possibly, be worth while examining the predominant qualities of the two books with a view to ascertain what light their similarities and differences may throw upon the respective literary tastes of the Englishman and the American.

There has, I believe, been no important critical denial of the right of "The Manxman" to rank as a "strong" book. The plot is drawn with consummate skill--not in the sense of a Gaborian-like unravelment of mystery, but in its organic, natural, inevitable development, and in the abiding interest of its evolution. The details are worked in with the most scrupulous care. Rarely, in modern fiction, have certain elemental features of the human being been displayed with more determination and pathos.

The central _motif_ of the story--the corrosion of a predominantly righteous soul by a repented but hidden sin culminating in an overwhelming necessity of confession--is so powerfully presented to us that we forget all question of originality until our memory of the fascinating pages has cooled down. Then we may recall the resemblance of theme in the recent novel ent.i.tled "The Silence of Dean Maitland,"

while we find the prototype of both these books in "The Scarlet Letter" of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who has handled the problem with a subtlety and haunting weirdness to which neither of the English works can lay any claim. As our first interest in the story farther cools, it may occur to us that the very perfection of plot in "The Manxman"

gives it the effect of a "set piece;" its a.s.sociation with Mr. Wilson Barrett and the boards seems foreordained. It may seem to us that there is a little forcing of the pathos, that a certain artificiality pervades the scene. In a word, we may set down "The Manxman" as melodrama--melodrama at its best, but still melodrama. Its effects are vivid, positive, sensational; its a.n.a.lysis of character is keen, but hardly subtle; it appeals to the British public's love of the obvious, the full-blooded, the thorough-going; it runs on well-tried lines; it is admirable, but it is not new.

"Trilby" is a very different book, and it would be a catholic palate indeed that would relish equally the story of the Paris grisette and the story of the Manx deemster. In "Trilby" the blending of the novel and the romance, of the real and the fantastic, is as much of a stumbling-block to John Bull as it is, for example, in Ibsen's "Lady from the Sea." "The central idea," he might exclaim, "is utterly extravagant; the transformation by hypnotism of the absolutely tone-deaf girl into the unutterably peerless singer is unthinkable and absurd." The admirers of "Trilby" may very well grant this, and yet feel that their withers are unwrung. It is not in the hypnotic device and its working out that they find the charm of the story; it is not the plot that they are mainly interested in; it is not even the slightly sentimental love-story of Trilby and Little Billee. They are willing to let the whole framework, as it were, of the book go by the board; it is not the thread of the narrative, but the sketches and incidents strung on it, that appeals to them. They revel in the fascinating novelty and ingenuousness of the Du Maurier vein, the art that is superficially so artless, the exquisitely simple delicacy of touch, the inimitable fineness of characterisation, the constant suggestion of the tender and true, the keen sense of the pathetic in life and the humour that makes it tolerable, the lovable drollery that corrects the tendency to the sentimental, the subtle blending of the strength of a man with the _navete_ of the child, the ambidextrous familiarity with English and French life, the kindliness of the satire, the absence of all straining for effect, the deep humanity that pervades the book from cover to cover.

If, therefore, we take "The Manxman" and "Trilby" as types of what specially appeals to the reading public of England and America, we should conclude that the Englishman calls for strength and directness, the American for delicacy and suggestiveness. The former does not insist so much on originality of theme, if the handling be but new and clever; there are certain elementary pa.s.sions and dramatic situations of which the British public never wearies. The American does not clamour for telling "curtains," if the character-drawing be keen, the conversations fresh, sparkling, and humorous. John Bull likes vividness and solidity of impasto; Jonathan's eye is often more pleasantly affected by a delicate gradation of half-tones. The one desires the downright, the concrete, the real; the other is t.i.tillated by the subtle, the allusive, the half-spoken. The ant.i.thesis is between _force_ and _finesse_, between the palpable and the impalpable.[20]

If anybody but George Du Maurier could have written "Trilby," it seems to me it would have been an American rather than a full-blooded Englishman. The keenness of the American appreciation of the book corresponds to elements in the American nature. The Anglo-French blend of Mr. Du Maurier's literary genius finds nearer a.n.a.logues in American literature than in either English or French.

The best writing of our American cousins has, of course, much that it shares with our own, much that is purely English in source and inspiration. Longfellow, for instance, might almost have been an Englishman, and his great popularity in England probably owed nothing to the attraction exercised by the unfamiliar. The English traits, moreover, are often readily discernible even in those works that smack most of the soil. When, however, we seek the differentiating marks of American literature, we find that many of them are also characteristics of the writings of Mr. Du Maurier, while they are much less conspicuous in those of Mr. Hall Caine. Among such marks are its freshness and spontaneity, untrammelled by authority or tradition; its courage in tackling problems elsewhere tabooed; its breezy intrepidity, rooted half in conscious will and half in _nave_ ignorance. Besides these, we find features that we should hardly have expected on _a priori_ grounds. A wideness of sweep and elemental greatness in proportion to the natural majesty of the huge new continent are hardly present; Walt Whitman remains an isolated phenomenon. Instead, we meet in the best American literature an almost aristocratic daintiness and feeling for the refined and select. As compared with the British school, the leading American school is marked by an increased delicacy of _finesse_, a tendency to refine and refine, a perhaps exaggerated dread of the plat.i.tude and the commonplace, a fondness for a.n.a.lysis, a preference for character over event, an avoidance of absolutely untempered seriousness and solidity.

Mr. Bryce notes that the verdicts of the best literary circles of the United States often seem to "proceed from a more delicate and sympathetic insight" than ours.

This fastidiousness of the best writers and critics of America is by no means inconsistent with the existence of an enormous cla.s.s of half-educated readers, who devour the kind of "literature" provided for them, and batten in their various degrees on the productions of Mr. E.P. Roe, Miss Laura Jean Libbey, or the _Sunday War-Whoop_. The evolution of democracy in the literary sphere is exactly a.n.a.logous to its course in the political sphere. In both there is the same tendency to go too far, to overturn the good and legitimate authority as well as the bad and oppressive; both are apt, to use the homely German proverb, "to throw the baby out of the bath along with the dirty water." This lack of discrimination leads to the rus.h.i.+ng in of fools where angels might well fear to tread. All sorts of men try to write books, and all sorts of men think they are able to judge them. The old standard of authority is overthrown, and for a time no other takes its place with the great ma.s.s of the reading public. This state of affairs is, however, by no means one that need make us despair of the literary future of America. It reminds me of the mental condition of a kindly American tourist who once called at our office in Leipsic to give us the benefit of the corrections he had made on "Baedeker's Handbooks"