The Contributors' Club

IT strikes me that women have not fared as well as men, on the whole, at the hands of the novelists ; that is, if quantity and quality are to be taken into equal account in the question. Some of the most successful creations of the writers of fiction have been feminine characters, but they have been proportionately few in number. The fact cannot be explained by that other fact that the majority of writers of the best fiction have been men, for the finest drawing of feminine character has not been the work of feminine hands. The alleged complexity of the nature of women may be held to account for the greater difficulty of its portrayal. I have my own doubts, however, as to this enigmatic quality of the feminine character, and fancy the simple truth to be, that if men comprehend each other better than they do women, it is because a man is brought into close and permanent relations with but a few women,—a wife, a sister, a mother, — while he is constantly and intimately associated with many men of many kinds ; and his opportunities, therefore, being less in the one ease than in the other, his knowledge is correspondingly less. Whatever the reason of it, the fact is noteworthy that the greatest novelists have in general been more successful in portraiture of the male sex than of the female. It would not be difficult to make a list of the fictitious feminine acquaintance who exist for us as really living personages, and for whom we have any lively feeling of interest, of liking or dislike; but the number of such male acquaintance is, comparatively, legion. In all Scott’s novels taken together there are not half a dozen heroines who can be said to have any real life and distinctive character. Jeanie Deans is certainly a live human being, and so, though in far less degree, are the Jewess Rebecca and Catherine Seyton, Minna Troil, and Diana Vernon. It may be asserted that Scott’s conventional heroes are also lay figures, mere walking gentlemen made to match the walking ladies; and no doubt this is measurably true, but not universally. Henry Morton and Quentin Durward have a life in them, I think, which Edith Bellenden and Isabelle of Croye have not. But the real heroes of Scott are not always those who fill the title rôle, and we are indifferent whether or not Nigel Olifaunt plays his part with spirit, while Richie Moniplies, King James, and George Heriot are his fellow actors on the stage. Markham Everard is a more interesting personage than Alice Lee ; but if he were not it would matter little, so long as Sir Henry and Wildrake and Charles appear upon the scene.

The men and women of Miss Austen’s novels are perhaps equally well done; or, if there is anything to choose between them, it is the women who, in this case, are the more lifelike figures. We cannot say of Thackeray’s women that they are unlifelike, but that they represent only a small section of womankind. His worst women — his Becky and Beatrix and Blanche — are his best drawn, the rest being mostly but slightly differentiated individuals of a certain species : they are good, loving, and insipid, like Amelia; good, loving, and priggish like Laura Pendennis; good, loving, and unjust and ungenerous, like Lady Castlewood. They are not wholly uninteresting, of course, for it is a genius who paints them. Madame de Florae is a charming sketch, and we all like Ethel Newcome; but take them together, and they seem to show that Thackeray had but a meagre comprehension of women, or a very limited respect for them. We cannot forget the “ incomparable,” the “divine,” Clarissa; but, for my part, in spite of some true touches of nature in the tale of her dying hours, I find it difficult to realize the existence of the lovely and injured Miss Harlowe.

George Eliot’s Romola and Dorothea, and still more her Myra, are so ideally conceived that to many persons, though not to me, they appear too far removed from actual existence to be regarded as we do human beings in general, even fictitious human beings. They certainly are not ordinary women, — more’s the pity ; but the objection, whatever it is worth, does not hold against those easily conceivable persons, Maggie Tulliver and Mary Garth, Rosamund Vincy and Gwendolen Harleth. Mrs. Gaskell has given us at least one feminine character, which for lifelike distincttness ranks with these last named, — the heroine of Sylvia’s Lovers. This author’s name recalls those of Charlotte Bronte’s heroines, about whom there has always been for me an odd mixture of reality and unreality. Her women, however, are at least possible, which cannot be said for her men. Among contemporary authors there are but few who have achieved signal success in the portraiture of women. We have had a good many pleasing and more or less truthful sketches, few rounded and finished portraits, of genuine and distinct individualities. Trollope’s women, even his good and lovely heroines, are inevitably affected by the deadening atmosphere of prose with which they are surrounded. Mrs. Oliphant’s women are too hastily constructed to order, while Charles Reade’s are fashioned after a special, cherished theory of his own manufacture. Mr. Hardy has great skill in depicting varieties of the more or less thorough-paced coquette, but from lack of power or of inclination stops there. To Mr. James we owe several delightful sketches, one carefully drawn outline picture of a certain Light woman, and one finished portrait, which, only after we have ceased to contemplate it, we become a trifle critical of, as on the whole more interesting than charming. Mr. Howells is as clever a painter of the American jeune fille as Cherbuliez is of the French variety of the same species ; but it remains true that such character sketching is not Mr. Howells’s strongest work.

A writer more new to fame, the author of The Grandissimes, has achieved a decided success in this line in the two women, Aurore and Clotilde, sketched in the above-named novel. Mr. Cable is an American, but it is an Englishman who has conceived one of the daintiest feminine shapes to be found out of Shakespeare. This may seem extravagant language to apply to Mr. Blackmore’s work, and it is perhaps necessary to remark that it is but a limited admiration we can give to so unequal a writer. It is true, nevertheless, that his Lorna Doone is one of the most ideally lovely creations of fiction, made up out of as few and simple qualities as a Perdita or Rosalind, but with a magically infused reality of poetic life, that leaves one satisfied, yet wondering what is the secret of imaginative creation like this.

How different the old-fashioned heroine of romance was from the heroine of to-day ! The former was a being who could do no wrong; who was incapable of conducting herself otherwise than in the most becoming manner, no matter in what trying circumstances; whose opinions were as correct as her speech was elegant. The majority of novelists nowadays do not depict heroines of this sort; such creatures, they fancy, their readers would condemn as “ faultily faultless; ” and they give us instead the inconsistent, defective real woman whom we all know, — who interests us because she is real, or at least seems real to us. And it is well they should do this, since novelists in general are not geniuses, and to create character at once ideal and wholly real requires a measure of true genius. The old-fashioned piece of perfection was an insipid creature, not because she was perfect, but because she had no distinctive individuality, and was just like every other heroine of the kind. But Shakespeare has shown us purely ideal women, no one of whom could possibly be mistaken for another; each flawless in her kind, yet distinctly individualized, having her own special traits of mind and character, by which we know her and for which we love her. That novelists in general are not Shakespeares, and that even when they attempt ideal creation they fail of perfect achievement, is not wonderful, but I like to recognize the worthiness of the aim and success which are but partial. It is for this reason that the character of Camilla, in Monaldini’s Niece, pleased me so well. If not so real as might be, I think she has in her the breath of life ; she is picturesque and charming, and not impossible. It seems to me that authors ought to recognize the truth that, if mere perfection is insipid, mere imperfection may be so also ; that simple prose and commonplace contain no more truth to nature than the poetry of the imagination, which does not make, but finds, the loveliness it seeks.

If I were an artist of talent I should like to employ my skill in painting a gallery of portraits of my fair fictitious friends. I think it might be a charming collection, and two whom I have not yet named should hang there, side by side, with a becoming light upon their faces : the dark-eyed Nora, the heroine of Quits, who contrives, in the happiest manner, to assert her individual existence, in spite of being placed as the most conventional of heroines, vis-à-vis a truly traditional hero ; and the blonde Hildegarde of The Initials, who is so dear a friend of mine that I found myself thinking of her tenderly when I mounted the staircase of that hotel in Frankfort where she and Hamilton finally settled their affairs, to their mutual satisfaction.

— I know little or nothing, perhaps, of the flying-machine of the future, but I know well that the balloon must be abandoned. To think of either safety or success in the basket under the gasbag is absurd. Wherein will be the value of the successful flying-machine but in the rapidity and precision of its flight ? Unless we can fly swiftly and surely from point to point, why fly at all ? The bulk of the balloon — the one property which has endeared it to a cowardly race, and prolonged its existence thus far — is a sufficient and peremptory reason for discarding it. You cannot propel it any faster than a canal boat in any direction, nor against the wind at all ; and no change in its form can ever surmount the fatal objection.

But if we give up the balloon, and try to fly as the living bird flies, what then ? Say that we make the body of our bird of the compactest and most symmetrical shape for cleaving the air with the least resistance, and trust to the beat of its wings to sustain its weight, — as who doubts we may ? — still, how are we ever to launch it, and carry it successfully over the neck-breaking period of its existence ? For let us not belittle the difficulties which await the inventor of the Bird. Inventions have sometimes come like a flash to a man. They have been complete from the moment of their conception. When once the happy thought has come, there has been nothing further to do but to make the thing and set it going. But, in the nature of things, the Bird can never spring fully fledged from the brain of any man. However completely it may be conceived, there must still be a time, and probably a long time, of experiment and adjustment, interspersed with numerous failures and discouragements.

The expense involved in successful aeronautics will be not merely in the building of the Bird, even supposing it could be complete and satisfactory from the first There will be a permanent plant required for its operation, entirely independent of the cost of building. We have not merely the Bird to construct, but we have its operator to instruct. We want a contrivance to sustain the Bird in its first weak and awkward attempts at flight, just as the toddling infant must be upheld when it begins to walk ; only that in the case of our Bird the need is far more imperative. Nor is it merely in the experimental stage of flying that this apparatus will be required. We may well admire the sustained flight of a bird, especially a large one, as the ideal of easy and graceful motion ; but when we see that bird rise from the ground, or from the surface of the water, we witness the most difficult and laborious of animal movements. It is to be expected that our Bird, being in that respect not so well equipped as the living animal, will at every flight need some help in mounting. For obvious reasons, it must be made as light in every part as is consistent with safety. Think, then, of a paper boat, for instance, with widespreading wings and a windmill behind, going through the air at a speed double that of the fastest railway train, and coming to the ground without serious accident. Our sending-off apparatus must be also a catching apparatus, and will be at no time more needed than when receiving the returning voyager of the air after its journey is done.

At least three forms of the sendingoff apparatus suggest themselves. The idea of the first, and best, is as simple as can be. An upright pole ; a gaff, extending outward and upward from the base of it, and forked at the lower end to fit the pole and revolve around it; and a suspending cord from the top of the pole to a point near the outer end of the gaff, will represent the whole arrangement. If now we hang our Bird by a string to the outer end of the gaff, and carry this rapidly around until the speed of flight is attained, the Bird being at the same time accurately balanced, and its flying mechanism in motion, we may slip the string and release it, and it will be able to sustain itself and steer away in safety.

But for the use of a Bird capable of carrying men, and therefore of some practical value, our contrivance is imagined on too small a scale. The pole for our purpose must be a tower, high and strong, and our gaff a boom of elaborate construction, say of tubular iron, braced laterally to prevent its swaying to and fro, and suspended, not by a single string, but by a series of stays distributed along the length of it. The tower must have a circular base, with a carriage fitted to travel around it and carry the inner end of the boom, and within the tower a steam-engine or other motor to drive the boom around. We must have a tower, say, two hundred feet high, and a boom that will sweep a radius of two hundred and fifty feet. With a boom reaching out three hundred feet from the centre of the tower, or describing a circle of six hundred feet in diameter, we should traverse more than a third of a mile at each circuit; and at five turns per minute, a speed of more than one hundred miles per hour would be attained by the outer end of the boom. This would certainly be fast enough for our purpose. Now, if we had our Bird suspended from the boom by a cord of sufficient length to allow it considerable freedom of movement, and with a contrivance by which it could be instantaneously released, we should be ready for flight.

Impelled by the engine in the tower, the boom begins to revolve, carrying the Bird with it. The mechanism of the Bird is set in motion, and it begins to flap its wings for self-propulsion; only at first the propelling instrument will probably be a propeller wheel instead of wings. The steering apparatus of the Bird must, under the command of its operator, be for the time adjusted to the circular path of the boom. As the speed of the Bird increases, and it begins to feel the lifting power of the air beneath its extended wings, the weight which the boom sustains is proportionately reduced, and the boom at length becomes rather the companion than the carrier of the Bird. This process may continue until the whole weight of the Bird is actually carried by its own wings, and the suspending cord hangs loose. When that first occurs will be a notable moment in the world’s history. Without risking our necks, we have brought the Bird to the act of self-sustained and independent flight. From that moment the art of flying is an accomplished fact, and all needed improvements for safety and practical success will swiftly and surely follow.

When our Bird thus becomes demonstrably able to fly alone, we must be in no haste to release it. Careful and protracted trials should be insisted upon, and a minute inspection of every part of the machine. The boom should be revolved and the Bird flown in both directions, that the whole range of its steering powers may be proved. Another and more vital point must not for a moment be lost sight of. The operation of alighting must always be a more dangerous one than that of mounting, and every possible facility must be provided for it. Next to the net, or hook, or other catching device to be furnished at the end of the boom, the most necessary point to be secured is such a command of its movement as will enable the engineer of the boom to cooperate with the Bird, and place his machine in the right place at the right time, and give it motion at the right speed. The Bird must have full control of its course, so as to steer itself perfectly, — not necessarily with sudden sharp turns, nor in the shortest curves; but it must be able to fly high or low, to turn to the right or to the left, and to go in a circle in either direction. When ready to alight, it will approach the tower by a circular movement, coming nearer and nearer as carefully as possible. The engineer of the revolving boom must regulate its speed and position exactly to the movement of the Bird, and at the precise moment be ready to hook on: and until that can be done with certainty there is no safety in flight and no room for exultation.

Thus far, in the high tower and the revolving boom, I have proposed nothing which is not easily within the scope of contemporary engineering skill. Such a tower as that now standing at Coney Island would be tall enough and strong enough for our purpose, though its form is not the best possible. It would of course be necessary to have the land unobstructed by trees or buildings, to give the Bird room to mount. When our instinctive ideas of danger can be readjusted to the case, and we realize that it is no more fatal to be killed by falling into the water than upon the land, a small island, with a wide reach of water around it, will be our ideal location. What better site can be found than that selected for the long-promised statue of Liberty Enlightening the World ?

In the second form of the apparatus proposed, the high, fixed tower might be dispensed with, and the revolving arms mounted upon a turn-table, like a modern draw-bridge. The cost of this arrangement could not be much, if any, less than that of the tower, and there is no other apparent reason why it should be preferred. A third form of apparatus would be that of a car upon a circular railroad track, of which I care to say but little, as it could be of no practical value.

It is not my purpose here to say much of the Bird itself. It is not to float, but to fly, and its whole build must accord with that idea. Its speed, and not its levity, will sustain it. In the balloon we increase the bulk as much as possible, and its shape makes little difference ; in the Bird we reduce its body to the smallest compass, and to the shape that will offer least resistance to rapid motion. If it is ever to carry a man, he must be entirely inclosed within it, and windows provided, through which everything may be seen and its course directed. As in land travel we have never yet been able to make machines that will walk with the leg movement which animals use, so we shall probably not be able at first to propel our Bird by the beat of its wings. The wings will, however, still be needed, as the resistance of the air against them will be the chief sustaining force. As the wings will be at the back, or rather top, of the machine, and the weight of the body and contents below them, the Bird will always be in stable equilibrium; and so long as propulsion continues, and the power to sustain the weight by the speed of flight is maintained, there will be no danger of its rolling over. It may be found that two pairs of wings will be better than one. The means of propulsion may be a fan wheel at the stern, similar to the propeller in water. As to the motor, we must say that steam is not yet superseded; but when steam is suggested, let no one think of a locomotive or a steamboat coursing through the sky. That is not putting it fairly. Our Bird will be of a very different breed. Its frame-work will be of the lightest material, and as steam - engines have already been made which, with the boiler, weigh only twenty pounds per horse-power, this may be further reduced. The strong current of air against the breast of the Bird will be a powerful condensing agent, and the water can be used over and over. The condensing tubes could serve for the frame-work of the machine, and thus add nothing to its weight. Many details of the Bird can be determined only by experiment, and experiment waits for opportunity. The Bird will steer easily. In its flight there will be practically nothing outside it to change its course; and if it be symmetrical in shape and the propelling force axial, as it would be with a single wheel, a slight hint of the rudder will direct it. When flying in the circular path, starting and alighting are the only occasions that will seriously try its steering capacity. The ability to fly in the circular path, which is required when the Bird is suspended from the rotating arm, being a guarantee of its steering powers, will also imply a propulsive force much more than enough to sustain it in horizontal flight, as it then has the centrifugal force as well as gravity to overcome.

In all seriousness the subject of flying is well worthy our consideration. Our mechanical resources are ripe for it. If possible, it is without doubt desirable. Let no one smile incredulously when I say that its promise of safety in travel especially commends it to us. If it involves new risks, it eliminates most of the old ones. As a new sensation and a source of keen delight, as a luxury first and a convenience and necessity after, we should do all in our power to promote it.