Mr. Isaacs, and Other Novels

MR. ISAACS ¹ is certainly a very unusual character; we had almost said a character new to fiction, but reminiscences of Bulwer make it difficult to go so far as that. The novel of which he is the hero has, with strange perversity, been heralded as an “ American novel; ” but there is nothing whatever in it relating to America, beyond incidental reference and the circumstance that the sub-hero, who is the ostensible narrator, is an American born in Italy, and very much Europeanized. Half the characters are English, and the scene is laid in India. If such a principle of announcement were to become common, we might naturally expect the next effort at an exhaustive New World romance to be described as an Irish story, should one of the dramatis personœ happen to hail from the unhappy island. Ignoring this point, however, for which the author is not to be blamed, we may as well say at once that the story is one of remarkable power and originality ; meritorious beyond the average good novel of the day, not only by its graphic method and verisimilitude, but also by the impressiveness of its central, regnant idea. The name of the author, who is a son of the American sculptor Crawford, is not familiar in the literary field, but we are disposed to think that an enviable reputation will, before long, attach to it; and although he has not yet given us an American novel, he makes an appreciable addition to the brief catalogue of American novelists. His story starts off with sundry paragraphs on freedom and despotism as affecting the growth of adventurers, which seem rather to prelude a historical essay than a concoction of imaginary occurrences ; yet when the narration has been entered upon, the book proceeds with signal energy, and can hardly fail to keep the close attention of any one who is susceptible to pungent, healthy writing, and to that swift truth of picturesque touch which belongs to trained observers.

The chief personage is an enormously rich merchant of jewels, who is not, as would at first be supposed from his name, a Hebrew, but a Persian ; and his true appellation, which he has dropped for the sake of business convenience, is Abdul Hafiz-ben-Isâk. A most extraordinary creature he is, too. Although he has never been in England, he speaks English like an Oxford graduate; he is a marvel of strength and grace, having a body which displays a “ perfect harmony of all the parts,” a “ noble face and nobler brain,” and eyes the brilliancy of which, the author says, would but imperfectly be reproduced by a jewel of six precious stones which he once saw. These orbs “ blazed with the splendor of a god-like nature, needing neither meat nor strong drink to feed its power.” His face, of “ a wondrous transparent olive tint,” in one instance “ seemed transfigured with a glory, and I could hardly bear to look at him.” His voice is sweet, or rings like a trumpet; he goes into a cataleptic trance ; he has command of an occult remedy, the influence of which cures a hurt at a certain moment, though if allowed to continue active one hour longer it would be fatal. But, besides having the most exalted thoughts and the finest intuitions, he is a crack shot and a prime poloplayer ; so that he escapes being a prig, — if, indeed, there can be such a thing as an Oriental prig. Insistence upon perfections so numerous threatens, during the first half of the story, to make the man unendurable ; and in overcoming the fatigue that impends from this source, Mr. Crawford exhibits genuine force and skill, since it requires both to enlist one’s sympathies for a hero apparently so little in need of them. The situation helps the novelist here. This paragon is a Mussulman, and has three wives; but he has become dissatisfied with their pettiness, their bickerings and want of intellectuality, and has adopted unflattering views of women in general. Just then it happens that he meets a finely typical English girl, almost as perfect in her Western way as he is in the Eastern, —beautiful, physically strong, gentle, and brave, — with whom he falls in love; and she, although aware that he is a triple-wedded man, cannot forbear returning the attachment. The difficulty of this position is alleviated by the Mahometan system, which provides for easy divorce; so that Islamitic marriages are regarded by the English as hardly marriages at all, — mere unfortunate errors, into which a man has been deluded by his religion. But the author’s purpose in taking so peculiar a subject is not that he may depict any struggle between passion and occidental propriety, or obtain an effect without value other than that of bizarrerie. Through his love for Miss Westonhaugh, Isaacs is raised to a higher conception of the feminine nature. Hitherto he had “ accepted woman and ignored womanhood,” as the Buddhist Ram Lal is so well made to say, but he now rises to a higher perception. Fate interposes to prevent his union with Miss Westonhaugh; and then it is that Isaacs reaches a still profounder insight into the relation of man to woman, arriving at the knowledge of a spiritual union which may subsist after death has divided the lovers. Casting off the fetters of Islam, he retires with Ram Lal; whither is not stated distinctly, but to enter upon a life of devotion to the purely spiritual, — to become a Yogi, perhaps, one of the “ brethren,” an adept, awaiting translation to a higher existence, — and leaves all his wealth to one who had befriended him. With this partial echo of Edwin Arnold’s Great Renunciation the book closes. The author has at command an abundant paraphernalia of local details, that give novelty to the scene, — chuprassies, saices, shekarries, khitmatgars, sowars, pipe-bearers, and narghiles. There is a spirited description of a polo-match, and a long account of a tiger-hunt, which has an important function in the story, but usurps attention for itself, though couched too nearly in the special-correspondent style. Everything is subordinate, however, to the main issue, which we take to be the presentation of a higher form of human development in the perfected Oriental, Isaacs, than we of the West permit ourselves to aspire to at all; and at the same time to suggest the limitations in both types of civilization, and hint the desirability of uniting them in the tendency to a supreme something better than either. Mr. Crawford has a philosophic mind, as the conversation between Isaacs and Griggs concerning Asiatic and European thought, in the sixth chapter, bears witness ; and it may be taken for granted that he has written this book with no merely superficial aim. In pursuance of his object, he has employed elements of mystery and the semi-supernatural; he introduces secondsight; causes a man to disappear from a room without going through door or window ; and, in the expedition undertaken by Isaacs, Griggs, and Ram Lal for the release of Shere Ali, the Buddhist displays inexplicable power over the forces of nature. These things are impressive at the moment, but in retrospect they lose their cogency, and even cast a degree of discredit on the rest of the story and enhance the improbability of Isaacs’ existence ; so that they must, we think, be rated as flaws in the work. What we may call the machinery of astonishment, if it involve the unaccountable, will always be found to belong to a secondary order of art: one sees this clearly, on a calm consideration of Bulwer’s Strange Story, the tales of Hoffmann and Tieck, or some of Gautier’s fantasies; and even in Poe those stories which avoid it are the best worth remembering. But notwithstanding his use of it, and whatever stress he may have laid on the esoteric meaning of the novel, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in diffusing through the whole drama a common-sense atmosphere. People and events stand out vividly, as if we had known the one and experienced the other, ourselves. Miss Westonhaugh, though she says little, and is not rounded into much more than a sketch, is a striking example of good portraiture, done with a few masterly strokes; and for a bit of work minutely finished as a Meissonier in words, yet broad and dramatic, and denoting genius, we commend the reader to that scene with the Maharajah of Baithopoor, where, with his long, crooked fingers winding around the mouth-piece of his hookah, reveling in the touch of its gems, he is struck by terror, and the mouth-piece drops like the head of a snake back among the coils of the pipe-tube. The author’s style, in the main studiously practical, modern and familiar without being colloquial, moves easily and strongly; has a kind of cosmopolitan readiness and adaptability. We should call it agile, rather than flexible. It sometimes ascends into eloquence, occasionally slips into extravagance, and is capable of large and graphic effects in small space, among which is the fine description of scenery in the Himalayas. His humor is agreeable, if somewhat sophisticated and evanescent. Whatever Mr. Crawford’s faults may be, it is not too much to say that he exemplifies the best sort of realism, — the realism, we shall venture to call it, of the future. It is not cramped by a fear of incident; it does not lose itself in a microscopic study of details ; there is no morbid anatomizing about it, and no space is lost in discoursing upon the characters : these are simply placed before us with a bodily distinctness that cannot be evaded. All particulars of the actual are treated with zest and fullness, but combined with them is an ideal interest just as immediate and tangible. By means of such a realism the author is enabled to perfect the illusion of an extremely absorbing series of events, until at the end we discover that, while we have had an occasional glimmering sense that we were reading a novel, we have really been engaged with a daring romance.

Artlessness, at the opposite extreme from art, sometimes produces cognate effects ; and Margaret Lee accordingly succeeds in giving to her new book ² somewhat of the reality which Mr. Crawford has imparted to his, although she is seemingly quite ignorant of those manifold resources of delineation which he applies with so much skill. The material surroundings in which her characters move are not once brought before us with definiteness ; and, what is much more serious, we are introduced to a numerous family, who are miscellaneously shuffled together under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, Mr. and Mrs. Lacy, Mrs. Parker, Mrs. Gus Morgan, and so on, without anything to fix their individuality ; so that it is only by a gradual process that one is able to sort them out and establish their identity, They are not described, even by a few words ; they all talk alike ; and as they manifest themselves only in conversation, the result is confusing. It is to he inferred from the peculiar phrase “ He made a light” — the equivalent of Il fit une lumière — that the authoress has studied French novelists; but she has not learned the secret of the best among them, which is to fill in the whole background, and give the material adjuncts and a mental picture of the individual actors, without seeming to do so of set purpose. Mrs. Lee does not vex us by obvious filling-in, because no filling-in is attempted. She has, notwithstanding, a sincerity and an occasional incisiveness that entitle her work to favorable recognition. The authoress believes thoroughly in her heroine, whose works and days and bitter trials and unfaltering sweetness are all set forth without the slightest admixture of that feminine bravado common in our recent women novelists : the writer’s mood with regard to her approaches, in fact, the devout. Briefly, Constance Morgan marries one Gilbert Travers, and becomes his victim ; he being a selfish monster, who has originality enough to admit and analyze his own selfishness, and is thereby made doubly appalling. He is indifferent to his children, neglects his wife, fails in business, is ruinously extravagant, mortgages all her property, entangles himself with the divorced wife of a friend, and at last coolly proposes to Constance that they obtain a divorce, In doing so he confesses that he is incapable of loving any one but himself, and adds these trenchant words, which really strike the key-note of the whole divorce question to-day : “ Education is freeing women from bondage, as well as men. Expediency is the new morality. You and I have tried marriage for ten years, and it is a dead failure. Now let us seek some better method.” Constance, however, is a devout churchwoman, and the repugnance for divorce which she feels primarily as a loving woman is intensified by her religious faith. Now, in thus opposing the disciple of expediency to a sincere Christian, Mrs. Lee, who has not a hundredth pare of Mr. Howells’s literary art, has really gone much closer — whether consciously or not — to the heart of the situation than Mr. Howells has done in A Modern Instance; because the increasing tendency to throw off marriage bonds when they chafe is one of the logical results of the general emancipation which has been going on in this century, — emancipation of thought from tradition, of woman from subserviency to man, and, by consequence, emancipation of men from the irrevocable obligation they once held to individual women, when that was sanctioned by an unquestioning religious obedience. The various bearings of this fact we are of course not called upon here to weigh and judge : we merely observe that the authoress of Divorce has seized upon a case typical of all the various modifications of this problem, however distantly related to the general principle some of them may appear to be. There are many traits of insight in the book; and it is a fine turn that is given when Gilbert, after practicing every other form of insult, raises bis hand to strike Constance, but is stayed by her throwing herself upon his breast with the irresistible appeal of absolute love, begging him not to disgrace himself. The long conversations between the various women of the piece are naively natural in their dullness and discursiveness, through which, however, some point of value is always gained. But the force of the sad story and its conclusion is undeniably diminished by the circumstance that Constance, in her devotion to Gilbert, is weakly obtuse. For example, when she accidentally found Gilbert at the house of Mrs. Leavitt, reclining upon a sofa and “ toying with the stray ringlets on her neck,” while that separated matron sat beside him, reading, Constance was not jealous and offered no reproof ; “ but she wished that he would respect himself, and not touch Mrs. Leavitt’s hair.”

It is time that stout protest should be made against the new order of American novels, which, within the last four or five years, have been put forward with much blowing of trumpets as important political studies, in addition to being great historical and dramatic pictures of life in the United States. An accomplished scholar, a member of the Cambridge circle of literary men, almost a generation ago, cherished the fond scheme of writing a novel the scene of which was to be laid in the Mountains of the Moon, and the purpose, to present a convenient review of the world’s history in a few volumes, with a thrilling plot thrown in gratis. The new order of fictions, to which we have just referred, threatens to carry out, so far as this country is concerned, that alarming design; and Mr. Clay’s Modern Hagar³ is an instance in point. It dabbles with the Indian question, enters with intolerable prolixity into the partisan discussions preceding the civil war, introduces a large section of the struggle itself under the heading “ the panorama of war,” and meanwhile carries on by fits and starts, and with cavernous intervals, the story of a slave-girl wronged by a man who has bought her on condition of freeing her, and adds to his crime by re-selling her into slavery. Nearly eight hundred pages are devoted to this strange heterogeny, which is divided up with great elaborateness into “ books ” and “ parts,” bristling with quoted mottoes. The term chosen by the author for a portion applies to the whole: it is not a work of art, nor a “ drama,” nor a novel, but is simply a panoramic view of incidents without form or perceptible purpose. It is in vain that, among other foot-notes, Mr. Clay appends one excusing his repetition of facts in the history of party, to this effect : “ Fiction is often the most truthful and faithful conservator of history.” His fiction does not conserve anything of value, or that might not, for its purpose, have been put into a better form. There is no doubt a legitimate and extensive field for the novelist in the political life of this country as related to other phases of human action and feeling; but it will never become incorporated with the domain of art, until the belief has been abandoned that a mere lumping together of material, with no more integration or meaning than satisfies newspaper reporters, will produce a genuine novel. The Tourgée agglomerations have encouraged this belief ; but in time it will be seen that when a re-hash of latter-day affairs is palmed off upon the public, with a modicum of imaginary events accompanying it as a “ chrome ” inducement, neither the chromo nor the article of supposed solid value is worth having. Still, as Carlyle wrote, we may here say, “ Of no given book can you predicate with certainty that its vacuity is absolute; that there are not other vacuities which shall partially replenish themselves therefrom.”

There could hardly be a greater contrast to The Modern Hagar than that presented by the unostentatious recital of a blasted life, called Luser the Watchmaker.⁴ Recital, we call it, because it appears to be a chronicle of something which the author knows to have actually happened. It recounts the untoward fortunes of a Polish Jew, by trade a watchmaker, and voluntarily an instructor in the Beth-hamidrash (an institution for teaching Jewish youth, and also for worship) ; a high-minded, upright man, generous to the poor, whose prosperity is wrecked by the tyranny of Russia and by the Polish Revolution. Gradually, through accident and injustice, the ingratitude of others, and his own unwillingness to receive help, he is borne down to the ground, and perishes tragically. Unreasonable though he is in his independence, when his own family must suffer for it, his character maintains a noble integrity throughout, and constitutes a fit subject for the writer. The tale, moreover, secures to itself a peculiar interest by the careful pictures of Jewish manners and customs which it contains. Its tone is old-fashioned in the extreme, even to the allusion in one place to love as “ Eros the enchanter ; ” it is badly arranged, loaded with irrelevant matter, and at times diffuse. But, in spite of all, it has a kind of charm, exercised by its perfectly simple and unaffected tone, — a tone recalling that of Auerbach and Björnson, although the author lacks the pungent condensation of those masters, which in the Norwegian novelist especially is so noticeable, He is not ashamed to give free vent to emotion, and does not fear to touch the most familiar chords of human sympathy, sure of a response. Current fiction would be all the better for a more generous infusion of these qualities.