LITERATURE (FICTION), AMERICAN. 



331 



modern representation in fiction of the polychro- 

 matic and intensely human past, for the strenu- 

 ous life, but recently named though it may be, has 

 been lived for countless generations, and a hero 

 is a hero whether he died in velvets at Versailles 

 or survives in khaki at Manila. The historical 

 romance, bitterly assailed by intensely consci- 

 entious opponents as a bastard form of literary 

 art, still ruffles it with the best-selling books of 

 the day. In fact, the prince, the swashbuckler, 

 the king's favorite, the cardinal, the colonial gov- 

 ernor, the exile from court and the courtier in 

 exile, have been much in evidence this year, under- 

 going all kinds of shocking adventures, but car- 

 rying themselves with more reverence for the ob- 

 ligations of time and space than their ancestors, 

 sprung from the pen of the elder Dumas. Ro- 

 mance has made this concession to realism of 

 late, that it forswears all manifestations of hys- 

 teria and submits to the despotism of the mul- 

 tiplication table. It also seeks self- justification 

 in an increasing regard for the historical sources 

 from which it obtains its working material, and, 

 other things being equal, prefers an established 

 fact to a flight of fancy. The liberties taken with 

 history by Dumas, Scott, G. P. R. James, and 

 other romancers of a former generation, would be 

 considered sacrilege by Weyman, Doyle, Mary 

 Johnston, and Bertha Runkle. The last name 

 mentioned, by the way, has become widely known 

 this year through one of the most readable of re- 

 cent historical romances, a story cleverly con- 

 structed, brilliantly sustained, full of action but 

 not devoid of those delicate touches that are so 

 often lacking in tales of adventure. The Helmet 

 of Navarre has won its notable success through 

 its legitimate claims to a high place among novels 

 of the romantic school. When an author in these 

 days daringly harks back to the shop-worn times 

 of Henry of Navarre to tell a new tale of a period 

 that has seen much service in the cause of fic- 

 tion, the chances of failure are many. In The 

 Helmet of Navarre, however, Miss Runkle has 

 avoided the Scylla of imitation upon the one hand 

 and the Charybdis of too much novelty on the 

 other. Conforming to the obligations that she 

 was under both to the historians and to her read- 

 ers, she has written a novel that has been received 

 with enthusiasm by the devotees of romance and 

 by those more catholic readers of fiction who can 

 derive satisfaction from George Gissing one day 

 and from Stanley J. Weyman the next. 



It is an interesting fact that while in England 

 men are writing the most successful of the his- 

 torical tales, in the United States women are win- 

 ning most of the prizes offered by the romantic 

 school of fiction. Mary Johnston's high place 

 among the romancers of this generation is well 

 assured, and her latest story, runijing serially 

 this season in the Atlantic Monthly, promises to 

 achieve the vogue gained by her Prisoners of 

 Hope and To Have and to Hold. Sarah Orne 

 Jewett, in The Tory Lover, has employed Revo- 

 lutionary material to advantage, telling a tale 

 of Paul Jones and his times that is sustained in 

 interest and charmingly related. But the garden 

 of romance has not been abandoned wholly this 

 year to the discriminating enthusiasm and skill 

 of American women. In Cardigan, Robert W. 

 Chambers has given to his innumerable admirers 

 a fascinating tale of adventure dealing with the 

 efforts of Sir William Johnson to defeat the 

 American Tories in their attempt to win various 

 tribes of Indians to the cause of the King just 

 before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. 

 Mr. Chambers, since the publication of his strik- 

 ing tale, entitled The King in Yellow, ten years 



ago, has maintained a very hivh .v-oni^o of 

 achievement in fiction. Cosmopolitan in las en- 

 vironments, equally at homo in Kinopc <,i Amer- 

 ica, possessing a fertile fancy that rir-e.s in M>HU? 

 of its manifestations to the height <!' j/< niu Mr. 

 Chambers has gained lor himsolt a ])roiniticnt ;i 

 permanent place among the writers ot this ^cm 

 tion. His latest work is a valuable cont.nlmti 

 to the growing list of American historical 

 mances and is entitled to more than passing noli -c 

 among the novels of the year. 



Joseph A. Altsheler continues to strengthen his 

 position among the American novelists who gain 

 inspiration from the heroic pages of our nation's 

 past. Sympathetic, American in every fiber, in 

 command of the technique of story-telling, his 

 tales possess a fascination that is hard to ana- 

 lyze but the reality of which the public was quick 

 to recognize and reward. His most recent work, 

 In Circling Camps, finds Mr. Altsheler, in line 

 with Cable and Churchill, making use of a part 

 of the inexhaustible material bequeathed to the 

 teller of tales by the civil war. This story of a 



great campaign is ingeniously woven and in it 

 the reader comes upon much of the best work that 

 this promising author has yet done. 



In D'ri and I, Irving Bacheller has taken ad- 

 vantage of the vogue of his Eben Holden to win 

 another popular success. Both of these stories 

 possess striking merits and glaring defects. In 

 the judgment of many seekers after the light that 

 succeeds in literature, there has been nothing in 

 the history of recent literature more surprising 

 than the applause that has greeted Mr. Bacheller's 

 later novels. That they possess an elusive, in- 

 definable charm to a vast number of not too crit- 

 ical readers is clearly proved. In what that charm 

 consists it is not easy to say. It may lie partially 

 in the author's frank simplicity of style or alto- 

 gether in the effective quaintness of his leading 

 characters. Without the weaving of complex 

 plots and in open defiance of many of the con- 

 ventions of the art of novel writing, Mr. Bacheller 

 has won the laurel wreath of success. And it 

 would be unfair to this author and an unwarrant- 

 able comment upon the taste of the public to as- 

 sert that his popularity is not justifiable. It is, 

 indeed, no small achievement in literature to di- 

 vide the novel readers of a great nation into two 

 hostile camps, and if Mr. Bacheller finds that the 

 tents of his admirers vastly outnumber those of 

 their opponents he may well feel pleased with his 

 remarkable feat. 



No account of the year's literary activities 

 would be complete without a grateful reference 

 to the additions made by Henry Van Dyke to that 

 short list of recent books that appeal both to 

 the general public and to the daintiest and most 

 conservative of literary epicures. Few are the 

 contemporary writers of fiction whose style is 

 inspired with that invaluable quality that we call 

 distinction, that delicate aroma of a pleasing per- 

 sonality that makes itself felt in ways that we 

 can not follow to their source, now manifesting 

 itself in a delicate sense of word-values, now find- 

 ing expression in a characteristic phrasing of a 

 sentence, and always and delightfully dominant 

 over the thought itself. There is no living Ameri- 

 can writer who displays this rare quality of style 

 in a larger measure than the author of The Ruling 

 Passion, a series of short stories that demonstrate 

 anew Dr. Van Dyke's marvelous versatility. 

 That he finds the time and energy to accomplish 

 so much that will take a permanent place in 

 American fiction is a cause both for astonishment 

 and rejoicing. 



Sarah P. McLean Greene is not a prolific writer, 



