Mr. Allen's the Choir Invisible

IT is not altogether easy to say whether a poet and a historian have been deflected in Mr. James Lane Allen, or a novelist is in process of development through the absorption of lyric and historic propensities. Certain it is that in his latest book ¹ Mr. Allen does not yet show himself a great story-teller, but so far from disappointing the reader, he arouses the liveliest anticipations, and causes one to wonder just how he will emerge under the various influences which seem to be impelling him. We think he will be a novelist, perhaps even a great novelist, — one of the few who hold large powers of divers sort in solution to be precipitated in some new, unexpected form. For after all, his prime interest, as this book discloses, is in character, and character dramatically presented, and this is the fundamental aim of the great novelist.

Yet the structural story of The Choir Invisible is meagre, and Mr. Allen has not even made the most of the opportunity for narrative which it presents. John Gray, a young Kentucky schoolmaster of Scotch parentage and Pennsylvania backwoods rearing, five years before the close of the last century, thought himself in love with Amy Falconer, the coquettish niece of Major Falconer, of Lexington. He was about to offer himself to her, in spite of the guarded dissuasion of Major Falconer’s young wife, who had read the girl’s nature more clearly than John, when the caprice of fortune and a careless jest separated the two, and another lover stepped in and carried off the prize. The true woman whom nature had designed for him was Mrs. Falconer, but under the influence, so to speak, of the choir invisible, this man and woman missed the perfection of union, and, after a time of tremulous nearness, separated at a parting of the ways.

As we have said, story there is none in the plain acceptation of the term. There are two or three moving incidents, as the fight with the panther and the tussle with a coarse mischief-maker, but the drama which is enacted, a spiritual drama of real significance, finds but casual materialization in the events of life as led by the dramatis person&339;. Mr. Allen’s attention is fixed upon the struggle which is going on within the breast of John Gray, first when he is losing Amy, and then when he is finding Jessica. It is, by the way, one of the delicate touches by which Mr. Allen adds to the sanctuary about his heroine that he scarcely refers to her by this name. She is “Mrs. Falconer ’ throughout, “aunt Jessica ” once or twice, and “Jessica” once only in a bird’s remote call to the hero’s consciousness. All besides this is treated as episodical. The incidents which carry the narrative along are the mere nothings of life. In one aspect this nonchalance of narrative heightens the effect of the spiritual story ; yet it is a dangerous expedient. A great esoteric action craves great exoteric art, and we think Mr. Allen depends too much upon the suggestion of incident, as when, at a critical moment in his hero’s life, he betrays the inward movement only by an almost casual reference to a night ride back to the heroine’s neighborhood.

The story is set in a slight framework of pioneer life, and there are a few hints at that undercurrent of history which nearly swept Kentucky into the deep waters of imperial dreams. Again, this lightly sketched background appears to have been used for the purpose of throwing the lovers into higher relief, yet one looks wistfully at the possibilities implied in the historic events. The fine imaginative power with which Mr. Allen reconstructs the period holds out such promise of vigorous action and portraiture that the reader is inclined to regret the trivial use to which the power is put. Surely the love story would not have suffered if it had been the centre of a political storm as well. But this is going beyond our limits. We have to do with the story Mr. Allen wrote, not with the one we wished him to write. Only, we urge, why throw back so modern a theme into a former century and not derive still greater benefit from the rejection ?

We value the sureness with which the ethical problem implied in the story is stated and solved ; we set a very high estimate on the power of historic imagination which Mr. Allen shows, and recognize with the greatest pleasure that he is not exploiting local idiosyncrasies, but drawing with a free hand the outlines of an adolescent state, and if we had only these elements of a worthy novel we should think ourselves fortunate. But the charm which The Choir Invisible holds for an attentive reader does not lie in either of these elements half so much as it springs from the informing spirit of the book, — a spirit so rare in our fiction that we watch it here with the keenest pleasure. The humor and grace which attend upon a refined estimate of life we have had in our fiction ; the purity of tone, also, which is the fragrance of a delicate perception of values. Mr. Allen himself, in previous books, lias shown a playfulness which is winning ; there is less of it in this. But the imaginative beauty which lies deep at the roots of things and makes him who perceives it rather grave than merry, this is a rarer grace, a more enduring quality of fine literature. We have had the opportunity of noting it once or twice. Mr. Arthur Sherburne Hardy has disclosed it in Passe Rose, and there have been touches of it in minor pieces of fiction. Hawthorne had it supremely, yet one cannot read Hawthorne without being reminded of Coleridge’s river Alph flowing through sunless caverns. This beauty has lain in other books by Mr. Allen, but in none, we think, has it been under such high command as in this.

It would be ineffective to attempt to persuade the reader of this by means of single passages, though many could be cited which would at once give out their own music. The beauty is largely due to the noble use which Mr. Allen makes of the note which nature sounds. Again and again one is reminded, not by a fanciful interpretation, but by strong imaginative penetration, of the elemental forces of nature as they make themselves known in various forms of life. It is as if one had held communion with nature, not as a hermit nor as a scientific investigator, but as a poet with strong human sympathies, and then, essaying to render plain the passages of a man’s heart, had brought with him this hypætliral light and let it flow into all the recesses.

Indeed, paradoxical though it be, this very quality of beauty, almost lyrical sometimes in its form, has misled Mr. Allen in his task as a writer of fiction. It has apparently persuaded him to be neglectful of the homely virtues without which fiction cannot maintain a secure hold on life. In his deep interest in his hero and heroine he has too often forgotten his story, and the three, author, hero, and heroine, have gone off into the woods by themselves. The reader follows them, but at too great a distance, after all, for his own satisfaction. He does not miss the rare strain of music in Jessica Falconer, or the shrill sweetness of the parson ; he is aware of the vibrant melody in John Gray himself ; but the choir invisible is a little too screened from view, a trifle too remote, to permit its harmony the full measure of tone which the reader of this book divines rather than directly perceives.