America, Altruria, and the Coast of Bohemia

IN A Traveller from Altruria¹ Mr. Howells has turned aside for a moment from fiction, and written the confession of his faith. It is not put forth as an apology or a personal confession ; he is far more preoccupied with the gospel itself than with the circumstances of its revelation ; but it can hardly be amiss for us to glance back at the origin and growth of his creed as far as they can be traced in his novels, for to try to enter into an author’s thought by the door through which he has himself approached it is to obtain a base for criticism. Mr. Howells began as a poet and suburban idyllist, with defective literary and historical standards, but with fine literary gifts and delicate observation of contemporary traits. The poet heart is still alive in him, the historic sense still undeveloped. He is still too contemporaneous, but the main factor in the rise of his later art and of his new creed has been the element, not of poetry, but of realism. Turning to the life about him for his subjects, he studied it more and more closely, reproduced it more faithfully, and, from an idyllist, became a realist: at first, a realist in method, as in Silas Lapham; afterwards, under the influence of Tolstóy, a realist by conviction, with a deep sense of the sacredness of the real, and of the value of those simple and homely virtues which seem to have wandered least from the underlying truths of life. In The Minister’s Charge and Annie Kilburn this faith has produced a final and reorganizing stamp ; altruism is already there, but its part is that of an interpretative faculty. As such, it is distinctly a new note in our literature. The separate traits of New England life have perhaps been rendered as vividly by other writers, but nowhere else do we find the common mind delineated with such tenderness and comprehension. No such attempt has ever been made to unravel the divers threads of our social life ; to reveal mind to mind and class to class ; to show the part of ignorance in human failings, of kindliness in human virtue. So far, these two novels, together with the admirable Hazard of New Fortunes, express the same feeling as A Traveller from Altruria, only less distinctly formulated, and we cannot but look upon them as the high-water mark of Mr. Howells’s achievement, both as thinker and writer ; but the evolution of the Utopian from the realist was a step perhaps no less necessary, and certainly no less interesting.

When we demand that the artist, face to face with the realities of life, shall remain wholly an artist, and pipe to our dancing, we are apt to ignore the fact that comprehension, to be rounded and complete, must pass into action of some sort, and that it is only at certain high periods of culture that art is in itself an active force, and an adequate answer to the claims of life. A close relation to the real brings a deepened perception of pain and discord, and an inevitable sense of “ the pity of it.” Tolstóy, who of all writers of fiction had the clearest, strongest, and, one would have said, the most serene perception of reality, abandoned realism and art together under the impulse of this vision, and sought refuge in a new altruistic gospel which reads like an altruism of despair. Mr. Howells has not experienced the reaction with this Slavic excess: realism has retained its hold upon him : he has searched the skies for promise of a better dawn, and has evolved an altruism of hope, a Utopia.

If men are inclined to smile at any Utopia, they are apt to be especially critical of one belonging to their own day, and struck off on the reverse side of existing social conditions. Mr. Howells bids us “ look here, upon this picture, and on this.” Altruria looms up vaguely, but the counterfeit presentment of America is unmistakable in its clearness, and, except for a few unimportant details. it is a just and vigorous representation. In a series of conversations which are at once thoroughly colloquial and well sustained, our political system and social organization are passed in review, and looked at not only from the point of view of the Altrurian and of his hardly less allegorical literary host, but also as the most intelligent thinkers in the country are coming to regard them. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find elsewhere, in so short a space, so able and clear-sighted a report of the trend and status of our social life. Alongside of those great economic problems which are closing in our horizon — problems of labor, competition, relation of employer and employed — we find the move unnoticed and intangible questions of our private and social intercourse dwelt upon with equal stress, and given a relative importance which may easily seem exaggerated. The loneliness of farm life, which we are wont to attribute merely to the number of acres, and that other loneliness belonging to town as well as country, and arising from endless social laminations, — the loneliness experienced by the Laphams in Nankeen Square ; the position of the summer boarders in a country village as a population wholly apart from the resident one ; the lack of any common basis of sympathy between rich and poor ; and the constraint of intercourse, — all these matters are treated, not as accidental or individual manifestations, but as coming under the same head, and forming part of an unconsciously systematized habit of social snobbery or social indifference. We can point out exaggerations here and there in the detail of this arraignment, but they do not affect its general truth. We can show that some of the instances are unimportant, and others probably due to that difficulty of social intercourse which belongs to us as a people, or to our defective resources for amusement, rather than to any lack of good will: but we should have to go back and inquire what has clogged our intercourse as a people, when we are noted in Our society relations for facility in conversation.

In this examination of our public and private life, Mr. Howells is making a new synthesis, from the American point of view, of the theme treated by Carlyle in Past and Present; but whereas Carlyle attributed the evil to the spread of democracy, and to the weakening of such ties of re-ponsibility and of duty between man and man as had existed in older and more unequal traditions, Mr. Howells sees in it a departure from the democratic ideal and a denial of the principle of equality. Both would agree that the dangerous element was individualism, the right of the individual to act for his own interest without regard to that of his fellows ; and so far both would lay the blame at the door of that glorious liberty which is fast ceasing to be our pride. Both turn to love as the solution. Carlyle prescribes it with an admixture of obedience on the one hand, and of rightly exercised authority on the other; Mr. Howells would have it mingled with equality : the one is the historical idea, the other the Utopian.

In the light of this gospel, men move and have their being in Altruria. America prostrates herself before the millionaire. Altruria will have no hero, save perhaps “some man who. for the time being, has given the greatest happiness to the greatest number ; ” she has discarded ideals, which she regards as uncertain and meteoric lights, for a steadfast and universal ideal. Money is abolished, and trade in kind is carried on peacefully, with no thought of gain. The danger of most socialistic schemes lies in the tendency to look for salvation to a widespread material well-being, and to a general spiritual well-being which would be practically no less material. There are passages which indicate that Mr. Howells is not altogether free from this tendency, but it attaches to the letter, not to the spirit of his doctrine. It is the spirit which is distinctive in Altruria, but we must confess that this does not make its realization seem the nearer. Mr. Howells would have this realization brought about by popular vote, which has so far been an effectual instrument in the establishment of competition and millionaire worship. By force Charlemagne baptized the Saxons, but it would take a miracle, and an altruistic one, to bring a modern Anglo-Saxon people as one man to the waters of grace, to induce men to vote for the abolishment of all that they have lived by heretofore. Regarded as a working political programme, Altruria presents many difficulties of this sort. The narrative or practically dialogue form in which the book is cast gives Mr. Howells the opportunity of answering beforehand many of the objections to his scheme, and his answers show a remarkable combination of rapt conviction with dexterity of argument. His method is not a sentimental one. His appeal is to that Christian ideal of brotherly love which we outwardly profess, and to that democratic idea of equality which we openly despise ; and his argument is not addressed to the feelings alone, but consists in examination of the intellectual grounds on which we base our unchristian theory of laissez-faire, and our undemocratic habit of regarding the majority of our fellow-beings with a stereotyped contempt. Unless the one consideration of practical unfeasibility be held to outweigh all the others, it must be owned that the balance often tips in favor of the Altrurian.

But to make practical adaptability the sole, or even the primary test of a Utopia is to take a puerile and short-sighted view of the matter. The real test lies in its value as a thought, and in the relation of this thought to actual life. Utopia can never be a fact, but it should always stand before us as an ideal, in the same way that the perfect state or action is held up as an ideal to the individual mind. Whatever great change in the structure or conditions of society may occur in the future (and some such change is to be expected, if only from the natural tendency of all social organisms to put on new forms in the course of time) will hardly result from a movement on the part of one class, or from a specific measure or plan. But the tendency of the change will be due to the impetus given by right or wrong thought and action. We have no right to say that evils are irremediable till they have brought about the catastrophe that ends in death. The idea that the spring of life can be wholly regulated by legislation we justly dismiss as facile and mechanical. But the doctrine of laissez-faire is no less mechanical; held up as a necessary law for human action, it is a discreditable one, and it is slowly being discredited the world over. Against this doctrine Mr. Howells has entered a significant and beautiful protest in A Traveller from Altruria. Its peculiar strength lies in the fact that it is made at once from the intellectual and from the emotional side. No superstition is more rife among us than that of treating all public questions by cleverness alone, and reserving heart for our private affairs. We need to go a little way from realism towards Utopianism, if only to get free of the argument that because things are, therefore they must be. The notion of the divine right of kings perished, not through revolution alone, but because of the gradual awakening of men’s minds to the fact that it had no foundation ; and we may some day discover that the theory of the divine right of millionaires is not built upon a rock. When we have got rid of this popular cult and of a few of our intellectual Philistinisms, we may be able to compare notes with a traveler from Altruria on more equal terms.

If we need any further indication of the fact that Mr. Howells, in becoming a Utopian, has preserved his mental balance and his realism, it is to be found in the circumstance that he can turn from the thoughts which have filled his mind in these latter years to the production of a novel like The Coast of Bohemia,² a piece of light literature, very much in his earlier manner, but in no disaccord with any later thought. It is a love story, pure and simple, in which the course of true love is hindered from running smooth by a touch of extra conscientiousness on the part of the lady, a fine degree of chivalry on that of the lover, and a slight excess of romanticism on that of the friend and confidante. These motives are indicated with great sureness and delicacy, and worked out with admirable fidelity to life. Slight as the story is, it is true throughout. The characters belong to our every-day American life : their leanings to Bohemia carry them no farther than its coast; their devotion to art does not lift them too high above their surroundings; and the poetry of their love is enveloped in no unreal glamour, but is part of the common poetry of the world. Artistically, the book is as good as anything Mr. Howells has done : the proportions are well preserved, the story winds and unwinds itself in an easy manner, the characters are attractive and clearly outlined. There is a good deal of detail, but there is no stress laid upon one feature to the disregard of others ; everything is in keeping. We could wish that Mr. Howells had allowed us to become a little more intimate with his charming heroine, and had been willing to engage our sympathies a little deeper. In his novels, as in Altruria, he is too distrustful of ideals, too jealous lest an individual should draw away something of the interest with which the common life should inspire us. If a Utopia points the way to happier things for a society, surely the height attained here and there by human lives is the most palpable evidence given to us of the possibility of higher good for all. But we should lose a great deal if Mr. Howells were to wander from the path of realism in search of ideal characters for his novels. It is by making us see America more truly, by bringing out its light and shade, exposing its evil and its good ; it is by his sincere delineation — which is at the same time an interpretation — of American and of human life, that Mr. Howells points the way toward that comprehension and justice which lie on the attainable side of Altruria.