THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB. A peach stone lies in the crocus bed, - Mr. Henry James's Europeans is, to me, his best work, so far; always excepting two or three of his short stories. For his peculiar style of mere hints as to such commonplace things as reasons, motives, and causes seems to me better adapted to a short story, which is necessarily a sketch or condensation, than to the broader limits of a novel, where we are accustomed to more explanation and detail. It is true that Charles Reade, also, seldom tells us what his characters mean, intend, or think, but only what they say or do; leaving us, as James does, to study them as we study our living neighbors, who carry no windows in their breasts. But the difference here is that Reade's characters always do such tremendous things, and so incessantly, that their mere bodily activity sufficiently defines their mental processes; whereas Mr. James, as far as possible, has his people do nothing at all. What atmosphere could possibly have been contrived more quiet than the wide, Cool Wentworth homestead, and its little cottage opposite, from which, as scene, the story scarcely wavers, save for that one glimpse of the Acton mansion, emphasized and slightly colored by its "delightful chinoiseries." The two Europeans arrive, and, after one sharply drawn picture of their dislike for the Boston horse-cars, they depart to this Wentworth home, and stay there through to the end of the tale. No one does anything; a drive for Madame Münster and a drifting about in a skiff for Gertrude are about all the action allowed. So quiet is the story in this respect that when, in the eleventh chapter, the baroness goes to see Mrs. Acton, and goes on foot, the description of her "charming undulating step" as she walked along the road is a kind of relief to us, and mentally we all go with her, glad of the exercise and movement and fresh air. Mr. James has advanced in his art; in this story of his there is absolutely no action at all. What is there, then? There is contrast of character, and conversation. I suppose it will be allowed without question that we are all far more interested in the baroness than in the other characters. Felix is, to me, a failure, in spite of his felicitous name; or rather he is a shadow, making no definite impression of any kind,—like Mirah in Daniel Deronda. His "intense smiling" does not save him; does not give him body, any more than the brilliant rainbow gives body to the spray at Niagara Falls. Gertrude is not a failure; but she is not sufficiently explained. Minute details concerning her are given, such as for instance, that "her stiff silk dress made a sound upon the carpet as she walked about the room; yet she remains from first to last like a tune which the composer has as yet but briefly jotted down. He knows it; but we do not. There is no mystery about it, however; it is only that he has not written it fully out, that is all. Mr. Wentworth is excellent throughout; we see him, we are acquainted with him, sitting there "with his legs crossed, lifting his dry pure countenance from the Boston Advertis er." There is no indistinctness in the outline; he is a figure clearly and carefully finished; some of James's finest art has been given to him. Clifford and Lizzie are good, the latter an amusingly accurate picture of a certain type of very young American girl,- pretty, coolly self-possessed, endowed with a ready, unappalled, and slightly-stinging native wit; a small personage whose prominence and even presence amaze and secretly annoy the baroness, who is not accustomed to consider and defer to the opinions of "little girls" in her graceful and victorious progress through society. Mr. Brand is the good, slow, serious, clean young man, with large feet and a liking for substantial slices of the excellent home-made cake of well-regulated households, whom many of us know. There is an unregenerate way (which Mr. James shares) of looking at these young men, which sees only their ludicrous points. Light-natured fellows like Felix (or what we suppose Felix is intended to be) are always laughing at them. Even when poor Brand gives up the girl he loves, and stiffens his resolution by offering, in his official capacity, to unite her to his rival, a ludicrous hue is thrown over the action, and we all unite in an amused smile over the young minister and his efforts, which, judged soberly, is unfair. The "Brands" always seem to me to belong to a soberer age; they are relics of plainer and more earnest times, and out of place in this American nineteenth century, where everything is taken lightly, and where ridicule is by far the most potent influence. During the war, the Brands had a chance: they marched to the war with tremendous earnestness; nobody minded their big feet on the plain of battle; their slowness was mighty, like a sledge-hammer. Their strong convictions fired the assault; they headed the colored regiments; they made, by their motives and beliefs, even small actions grand. The whole nation was in earnest then; the Brands found their place. But now they are left to themselves again, and are a good deal like mastodons, living by mistake in a later age, objects of amusement to the lighter-footed modern animals, and unable to help it. ter. 66 The baroness is, however, the characShe is the European," the contrast; she is the story. In the first description of her personal appearance, I do not think Mr. James was quite fair; he followed Tourguéneff, and pictured the irregularities of her features and personal deficiencies so minutely that I, for one, have never been able to forget it, or to think of her as in the least handsome. Now the baroness was handsome; she was an extremely charming woman. We have all met women of that sort; I mean women who had irregular features, but who yet, by their coloring, their grace, or some one single and wonderfully great beauty, kept us from noticing when with them whether their noses were classical, or their mouths large or small. If in real life this is a truth, it should be a truth doubly remembered and guarded in books, where necessarily the warmth of the personal presence is lost. Mr. James might have stated that her face was irregular, judged by rule, but he should have dwelt upon what beauties she did have, so that they would make a vivid impression; just as, in real life, they would have domineered vividly over her lacks, if she had entered the room where we were sitting. She is his creation; we George Eliot says, in speaking of Gwendolen's mood early one morning, "It was not that she was out of temper; but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism." So likewise it was not that the baroness spoke untruths; but the American world was not equal to the accomplishments of her fine organism, or the habits bred in older and more finished society on the other side of the Atlantic. Mr. James's delightful style is even more delightful than usual in this story. Mr. Wentworth's "thin, unresponsive glance; " Mr. Brand, "stiffly and softly" following; the "well-ordered consciousness" of the Wentworth house hold; Clifford Wentworth's "softly growling tone," indicative, however, merely of a vaguely humorous intention" (how good that is!); and, best of all, the last visit of the baroness to Mrs. Acton, and the conversation between the two women, Madame Münster at last giving up in despair, as she perceives that all her delicate little points of language and tone are thrown away, and feeling that she would never know what such a woman as that meant," these are perfect, and make us, for a while, impatient with less artistic stories. One peculiarity of style I have noticed, namely, the large number of what seem to me "stage directions." Thus, fourteen times in three consecutive pages, taken at random from those containing conversation, it is particularly noted down that they "looked at " each other. As "Gertrude looked at her a moment, and then, 'Yes, Charlotte,' she said simply; ""Gertrude looked at Lizzie Acton, and then looked away;" "She looked down at him a moment, and then shook her head." They "look at" each other "a moment," and "then" speak, uncountable numbers of times. Generally, in print, cela va sans dire. I don't mean that this is a fault at all; but certainly it is a characteristic peculiarity. - For the benefit of those who think that Mr. Brooks Adams's article in The November Atlantic, on Oppressive Taxation of the Poor, exaggerates or distorts the truth, I wish to present a plain statement of actual occurrences in corroboration of his assertions. It is the experience of a friend of mine, a laboring man, living in the suburbs of Boston, and may perhaps throw some light on the causes of the revolt against our administrative system and the discontent so widely felt at the prevailing character of our financial legislation for many years past. Desperate diseases are felt to demand desperate remedies, and men rush wildly into any movement that promises, however falsely, relief from burdens that are crushing out their lives. I give the account in the sufferer's own language: “I had $2000 in gold left me by legacy many years ago. Before the war I lent it; it was repaid to me in paper, in virtue of the legal-tender acts and decisions. In 1870, full of the idea so enthu siastically preached, that it was an immense advantage to a workingman to own his own house, I bought one which had been built several years; the price was $4500, and I paid $1500 down and gave a mortgage for $3000 more, spending a considerable sum in improvements. It was assessed at $3600, and the taxes were $12 on a thousand. The interest on the mortgage was seven and one half per cent., the mortgagees being taxed for it and charging me two and one half per cent. extra to make up for the tax, which therefore came out of me instead of them. Last year the assessment had been raised to $5000, and the taxes were $18.50 per thousand, making $92.50 of direct tax, instead of $43.20, as at first, - more than double. I paid $225 for interest, of which $75 was due to the mortgage tax; $7.50 per year for insurance; and allowing one and one half per cent. for repairs, or $75 more, I was paying exactly $400 a year for a house dear at $300, besides an indeterminate but considerable sum for public improvements. I had just $1500 of my own, and paid taxes on $8000. I could not endure it, and turned the whole property over to the mortgagees, sacrificing all I had put in; so that the financial legislation of the state and nation and municipal extravagance had robbed me of all the money I had in the world. I immediately rented the house of the mortgagees at $200 a year, half what I had been paying; and they will only have to pay taxes on $5000, while so long as I had it I paid on $8000. So much for the advantage of a workingman owning his own house; and so much for the equity of the system of taxation in this commonwealth. I was taxed on the money I invested in the property, on the money I borrowed to make up residuary value of the property, and on that same residuary value over again; while as soon as the men I borrowed the money from took it away from me, the latter amount was not taxed at all. The simple act of transferring the title to another party seems to have reduced its value $3000; and I can't see any reason for it. There is just as much of it now as ever, and it is capable of furnishing just as much revenue; yet it has to pay but little more than half as much. What equity is there in taxing a man not only on all the property he uses, but on all the money he has to borrow to retain the use of it? If I had not put in any money, and mortgaged it for the whole value, I should have been taxed on $10,000. So it seems the value of property rises in inverse proportion to the amount of ready money the man has that buys it, and the rich man who pays cash is only taxed half as much as the poor man who has none. If this is not legislating for the rich against the poor, what is? In plain words, I had to pay the $75 a year as a penalty for the crime of having only $2000 instead of $5000." It must be said that the advantage of a workingman's owning his own house has been grossly overestimated. Its chief effect is to tie him down to one spot and make it impossible for him to go in search of work or take an offer of a position in another place without great loss; and when dull times come he has an elephant on his hands, and the chances are even he will have to relinquish it and lose the fruit of a life-time of labor. It takes money to keep as well as get property, as my friend found to his cost. But a system that taxes the poor man twice as heavily as the rich, and bears harder on a man in exact proportion to his inability to bear the burden, is a monstrous iniquity, and has no excuse or palliation. The state government exists to encourage thrift and give every possible facility to every citizen to acquire a competence; yet its laws virtually prohibit any man from acquiring real property till he has money enough to buy for cash,- a system that would end in destroying the whole fabric of trade and industry. It is in the strictest sense legislation in favor of the rich and against the poor; and deplorable as it may be, it is not at all wonderful that many of the latter feel inclined to hurl the whole administrative system to pieces and see if under another they will not fare better. -I think I have a fresh "find" for Mr. Richard Grant White. It appears that freight-train is an Americanism. In a London reprint of one of my books, the proof-reader or the publisher, out of deference to the sensitive nerves of English society, has kindly substituted "good's-train" for my own barbaric phrase. This, by the bye, was in the pirated edition; in the authorized reprint I am allowed to say freight-train. Another possible Americanism occurs to me. When Mr. Dickens was in this country, in 1868, I chanced to use the word "spool" in his presence. A puzzled expression came into his face; then he said quickly, "Ah, I see! a reel." Is not spool English? Surely, I have seen the word "spool-cotton " printed on the labels of that kind of goods manufactured in England. Perhaps that was a device especially designed for the American market, like certain brands of champagne which are nearly if not quite unknown in the champagne countries. -- The coming of the Great American Novelist has probably been retarded fifty years by the recent cutting in of a Western newspaper correspondent, who thus describes the death of Sam Bass, the notorious bandit and train-robber of Texas: "As the sun retired to his rosy couch in the dim chambers of the hazy west, a scene full of sad interest was transpiring [this is newspaperese for "happening," or "taking place"] in a little plank house in the village. Upon a common cot, covered with strong, thick canvas, lay a young man, over whose manly brow twenty-seven summers had scarcely passed. He was what the world calls handsome, a man who naturally looked a leader of his fellows; one whom any woman might adore. Of medium height, he scarcely weighed one hundred and forty; of form finely proportioned, terse and from frequent expression of severe pain that passed over his pallid and even now corpse-like features. [This is slightly incoherent; the writer's meaning, if he had any, seems to have toddled off into space; but it is very fine.] He breathed heavily, and a subdued groan occasionally escaped his lips. Standing near the cot, and with deep interest regarding its occupant as the departing sunlight entered the apartment, stood Major John B. Jones, the commander of the Texas Rangers, and the High Sheriff of Williamson County. But no woman, no friend of the wounded man, was near. The young man who lay dying was Sam Bass, the great desperado, bandit, outlaw, and bold chief of the Texas gang of train-robbers. . . . The sad ending of the life of this noted desperado will serve as another beaconlight among the moral wrecks that lie along the strand of time! Strange to say, there was a good angel that occasionally threw light on this strange and dark life of crime. Young, pure, and fair among the daughters of North Texas [this seems to intimate that the daughters of North Texas are not as a general thing young, pure, and fair], she watched the fortunes of the robber chief. [So did the police.] It was the bright and beautiful rainbow spanning the dark abyss of a ruined human life." The most unreflecting reader of this elegant extract cannot fail to notice that the Plutarch of "Mr. John Oakhurst, the gambler," has been made to bite the dust on his own familiar ground. None but a genius of first order could have evolved such lofty prose out of so unpromising a subject as a red-handed thief, shot down by the officers of the law. Here the pathos and picturesqueness of that modern hybrid, the MoralScoundrel, are brought to their legitimate limits. What a delicious dimenovel atmosphere envelops the whole story! How obviously, in spite of him, the writer's admiration for the late Sam uel Bass crops out! That "manly brow," forsooth! and that pure young daughter of North Texas (she is probably serving out her time in some Western penitentiary), who disports herself as a rainbow over the abyss of a ruined human life! Was there ever such rubbish? Unfortunately, yes; there are newspapers everywhere which print little else. It is such writing as this that sends an emulous thrill through the gamins of our towns and highways, and makes the small wretches long to be romantic child-murderers and heroic bandit chiefs. In New York there is a juvenile weekly or monthly magazine crowded with narratives in which just such high-hearted pirates and scalawags as the late Samuel Bass are made to figure as heroes. Now and then, when I come across a specimen of the cheap literature of the day, especially the literature designed for children, I am almost tempted to doubt the wisdom of "compulsatory education." -In the September number of The Atlantic Mr. Sedgwick disposes rather summarily of M. de Laveleye's argument for the general adoption of some |