WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S LAST NOVEL

T is not often that the relation between reader and writer is so intimately personal in feeling as it was in the case of the author of "Joseph Vance," "Somehow Good," "It Can Never Happen Again," and the many other long, rambling, and entertaining stories that in varying degrees have given pleasure to all those English and American readers who are not afraid of being called lovers of the Victorian type of fiction. De Morgan quietly but incessantly cultivated this intimacy. It was of the kind that existed between Thackeray and his admirers, but not between Dickens and his countless readers, and this although De Morgan always stoutly maintained that as a writer he owed most to Dickens. However that may be, De Morgan had a way of his own of taking the reader into his confidence, of slyly sharing a joke with him, of involving him by what he once called his "button-holey" manner in a sort of sotto voce discussion of situation and motive. The result is that one feels a personal loss now that he can no longer look forward to "the next De Morgan,' and even in a measure a personal grief that so delightful and lovable a personality as William De Morgan has finished his course.

To be perfectly frank, neither "The Old Man's Youth" (no one can reasonably be expected to quote the complete cumbrous title, given in the foot-note) nor the preceding posthumous novel, "The Old Madhouse," may be ranked with the three novels named above in virility and charm. In both the manner is the same; the quality is there, the talk is clever and humorous, but the total impression is fainter, as might be expected of a man doing creative imaginative work after his seventy-fifth year.

But, if one would not select "The Old Man's Youth" as a reader's introduction to De Morgan, it should surely be read by all confirmed admirers. It has his touch and his charm, if not his full flood of vitality. It is not, moreover, a work half De Morgan's and half not, as some erroneous advance notes have stated. His wife, who has also died since the work was completed, has stated that, with the exception of a very few brief connecting and concluding chapters (which are pointed out by being called "The Story," while the rest is "The Narrative of Eustace John"), the book is left exactly as her husband wrote it. At least nine-tenths is De Morgan verbatim. The chief structural defect of the story is the premature disclosure, dramatically speaking, of the peculiarly heartless criminal act of a self-seeking woman. This is told in one of the interpolated short chapters, and one wonders whether Mrs. De Morgan could have misunderstood the intention. 1The Old Man's Youth and the Young Man's Old Age. By William De Morgan. Henry Holt & Co., New York.

Probably not; but it was not like De Morgan to dispel the mystery of a situation until he simply had to do so. In the main Mrs. De Morgan's chapters carry on the tale clearly.

A single passage may be quoted from "The Old Man's Youth" as an illustra

WILLIAM DE MORGAN

tion of the author's fashion of playing about in a byway of criticism:

Few of us have the hardihood to express opinions about color to real artists, but now and then a meek voice rises in protest against emerald green eyes and blackberry-juice lips, and is told that its owner is colorblind. How can he know that he isn't? And when he points out that another real artist has painted the same original with emerald green lips and blackberry-juice eyes, he does not score a single run. Because that is interpretation. It is always a case of heads, Inspiration wins; tails, you lose. Respectful silence is always open to bystanders, whose consolation it must be to reflect that the most original and powerful neosophies may pass and be forgotten.

It is odd that De Morgan's last book should have had in part the same theme as his first. "Joseph Vance" appeared in 1906-and it is a pleasure to record that The Outlook's reviewer. then referred to it as "a novel that aligns itself with the best English fiction." The reviewer noted also that Joseph Vance (the narrator, not his father) is "a sweet-spirited old man who has loved much, known many friends worth knowing, and suffered in silence for love's sake." Almost these words might be used of the old man who narrates his life in this last work. The message of

the two is not the same. Mr. De Morgan himself stated that of "Joseph Vance" in these words: "The highest good is the growth of the soul, and the greatest man is he who rejoices most in great fulfillments of the will of God." It is true that Joseph Vance had a happy old age and that Eustace John Pascoe died in an institution, and that the tone of the one life is warm satisfaction and that of the other gentle depression and hopelessness, but the spirit of the two men is alike sweet and unselfish.

The passage above quoted from "Joseph Vance" was selected by Professor William Lyons Phelps as the motif of that novel, and the choice was affirmed as correct by the author. A prize had been offered to a class at Yale for the best essay on De Morgan's novels, and in corresponding with Professor Phelps De Morgan had remarked that he always tried to have a dominant motif in his book and wondered whether the contestants would detect that in "Joseph Vance," adding, "None of the reviewers did." This appears in an article by Professor Phelps in a recent issue of the New York "Times's" Book Review section. The article should be read by all who care for De Morgan, as it contains many extremely interesting and characteristic letters hitherto unpublished.

De Morgan's literary career, and his whole life for that matter, was remarkable and unusual. We will repeat here its outline as it was given in our columns when the first of the two posthumous novels appeared:

"He was sixty-four years old before he ever thought of novel-writing. Then, like Scott with 'Waverley,' he wrote a chapter of 'Joseph Vance,' laid it aside unfinished, and only at his wife's solicitation finally completed it and sent it to a publisher. Between 1905 and 1917 (when he died at the age of seventyeight) he published eight novels and romances, most of them quite unusual in length and notable also for their vivacity, optimism, and cheerful philosophy; in other words, written with the spirit of youthful vigor rather than what might be expected from a man who began his apprenticeship to fiction in late middle-age. Apart from his novelwriting, Mr. De Morgan's career was one of versatile talènts; he was artist, inventor, and craftsman; he took part in William Morris's movement for household art; he designed and, we believe, manufactured tiles and stained glass; he invented a duplex bicycle, a sieve, and a smoke-consuming fire-grate; he had an intense interest in aviation; during the Great War he abandoned work on "The Old Madhouse' to study out scientific inventions for war use. In art, science, and literature his mind was active and his knowledge extensive; his ceramics and luster-ware work were said by Holman Hunt to compare well with the best Italian periods."

After her husband's death Mrs. De Mor

gan wrote an excellent account of some of his literary methods, part of which may also be here repeated:

"When my husband started on one of his novels, he did so without making He created his charany definite plot. acters and then waited for them to act and evolve their own plot. In this way the puppets in the show became real, living personalities to him, and he waited, as he expressed it, 'to see what they would do next.' As the story was always read to me while in progress, I, too, got to believe in the reality of the characters, and found myself thinking of them as real, live people, and I have frequently asked him, when he came down to lunch or had finished writing for the day, such a question, as, for instance, 'Well, have they quarreled yet?' and he would reply, as the case might be, 'No, I don't know if they will come to a quarrel; after all, I must wait and see what they will do.' However, toward the end of the book, when an intelligible winding up of the story became imperative, the plot was taken up and carefully considered, all the straggling threads gathered together and finally decided upon, though latitude was always allowed for details to shape themselves after their own fashion."

R. D. TOWNSEND.

THE NEW BOOKS

BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS FAIRY TALES FROM FRANCE. Adapted by William Trowbridge Larned. Illustrated. The P. F. Volland Company, New York. OLD FRENCH FAIRY TALES. By Comtesse de Segur. Illustrated. The Penn Publishing Company, Philadelphia.

Here are two volumes of French fairy tales. One is a little book; the other is a big book. But both are exquisite in paper, print, and illustration. In the little book we find "Cinderella," "The Sleeping Beauty," and other well-known tales, told in a way not to suggest fear or cause fright. In the other book there are less well known legends; the book comprises "Blondine," "Good Little Henry," "Princess Rosette," "The Little Gray Mouse," and "Ourson." The language is well adapted to youngest readers and hearers.

FOR THE GAME'S SAKE. By Lawrence Perry. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

A volume of commonplace stories for boys written according to the time-worn formula. Why a sport writer of Mr. Perry's reputation should be guilty of such an inaccuracy as to write, "It was seven-thirty precisely and one bell was striking from each of the yachts," we do not know. This is not the only error of a similar nature in this volume.

FICTION

HOUSE IN DORMER FOREST (THE). By Mrs. Mary Webb. The George H. Doran Company, New York. In this house on the forest's edge live the Darkes. The forest stands for freedom, nature, and beauty; the dull, commonplace house facing it stands for restraint and convention. Thus the novel is symbolic; it is also idyllic. The re

actions of the Darkes to house and forest contrast the longing for liberty of spirit as against superstition and slavery of thought. There is imaginative quality here.

BIOGRAPHY

LIFE AND WORK OF SIR WILLIAM VAN HORNE (THE). By Walter Vaughan. Illustrated. The Century Company, New York. There is romance in the railway world. As proof, note this well-written life of the boy telegrapher in Illinois who reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates, who rose in the Chicago and Alton system from train despatcher, telegraph superintendent, transportation superintendent, to the general superintendence of the Kansas City, St. Louis, and Western, to the presidency of the South Minnesota, and, finally, with all the expert knowledge thus acquired, who built the Canadian Pacific Railway; and he remained in Canada to play a great part in the national life of that country. Then he constructed the Cuban Railway, and for the first time the island's rich interior was opened to trade, transportation, and prosperity. He had now become an empire builder. Shortly before his death he said: "When I think of all I could do, I should like to live five hundred years." The grim fight he waged in his earlier years against poverty and the driving, dynamic force of his later acts are revealed in what he said some time ago:

Our whole civilization is the outgrowth of wars. Pain and distress accompany wars, and so they do childbirth. . . The human race continues and is the better... I hold that every nation should be prepared for war. . . . Napoleon was a curse to

the world, but armies are not.

By a curious coincidence the first President of the Canadian Pacific found out that his greatest rival in the railway world was the man who had warmly recommended him as the best person to build that road, namely, James J. Hill. The Canadian by birth and American by adoption was the rival of the American by birth and Canadian by adoption. MEMOIRS OF THE EMPRESS EUGENIE. By Comte Fleury. 2 vols. D. Appleton & Co., New York.

EMPRESS EUGENIE IN EXILE. By Agnes Carey. Illustrated. The Century Company, New York.

Here are two accounts-one French, one English-of a singularly picturesque woman, the Empress Eugénie. She died recently, ninety-four years old. In recounting her life Count Fleury has much to say about the connection of the French Court with the three great wars which happened during her reign: the Crimean, the Italo-Austrian, and the War of 1870 between Germany and France; indeed, he devotes his second volume to these matters, leaving to the first the more personal side. In that first volume we find many an illuminating glimpse into the lives of the members of the French Court-Princess Mathilde, for instance. Because of the Empress's well-known aversion to publicity, the author's statements may not in general be directly

"inspired," though his sub-title ("Compiled from Statements, Private Documents, and Personal Letters of the Empress") would indicate the contrary. Be this as it may, his material came from intimate Court sources. The account is also valuable in its comprehensiveness. In comparison, "Empress Eugénie in Exile" offers a glimpse of less than a year of the Empress's life. The author was a member of her household and saw her subject at close range. The information in this volume is more definitely at first hand than that in Count Fleury's; the Empress's personality is revealed more vividly and more appealingly than in the larger work.

MUSIC, PAINTING, AND OTHER ARTS FAN BOOK (THE). By MacIver Percival. Illustrated. The Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.

The art of fan-making, especially as developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is here described with the enthusiasm of a devoted collector of fans. A vast amount of information is given, accompanied with many illustrations of notable fans.

HISTORY AND METHODS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN PAINTING. By James Ward. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.

This volume is the third of a fourvolume work on "The History and Methods of Ancient and Modern Painting." It deals with Italian painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including the work of the great masters of the Florentine school and of the early Venetian painters. The text is discriminating and the pictures are unusually well chosen and reproduced.

TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION MAYFAIR TO MOSCOW: CLARE SHERIDAN'S DIARY. Boni & Liveright, New York. Mrs. Sheridan is a vivacious writer. She is of English and American descent. She is a sculptor and, as she says, in Moscow portrait work, not politics, was her concern. But she saw many outstanding figures in the queer Bolshevik menagerie-Lenine and Trotsky, both of She whom she "sculped," and others. tells how they looked, acted, and talked. Like most diaries, this is scrappy, but it has sharp descriptive passages. TOPEE AND TURBAN. By Lieut.-Col. H. A. Newell. The John Lane Company, New York.

A faithful, detailed account of motor trips in various parts of India, with a humorous slant that is often entertaining and with plenty of the author's snapshots.

EDUCATIONAL KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN'S HOUR (THE). Vol. I-STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN; Vcl. II - CHILDREN'S OCCUPATIONS; Vol. III-TALKS TO CHILDREN; Vol. IVTALKS TO MOTHERS. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

These volumes are well compiled, combined, and arranged. Much of the material is original and the selected matter is admirably adapted for the general purpose. That purpose is clearly explained by the titles of the volumes. The complete set of books should be of value in home and public library.

conspicuous of these Presidents, though one of the wisest and most useful of public servants, that Dr. Abbott has chosen for the subject of his "Snap-Shot" in this week's issue. During the Civil War Dr. Abbott was the minister of a Congregational church in Terre Haute, Indiana. The conflict between the Northern and Southern ideas was acute in such a place. In 1865 he resigned his pastorate to become Corresponding Secretary of what was known as the Union Commission to co-operate with the Government in the work of Reconstruction. In March of that year he went South. That was at a time when it was necessary to have a pass in order to go to Nashville, much as one needs a passport to-day to go to Europe. For the four years of political anarchy known as the Reconstruction Period Dr. Abbott endeavored to promote pacific measures for moral reconstruction and for the recementing of North and South. His purpose was to offer co-operation with Southerners who had the same aim. It was this experience that perhaps enabled him to understand particularly the difficulties with which President Hayes had to deal and the measure of President Hayes's success.

F

At

REDERICK MORGAN DAVENPORT has been ever since 1904 Professor in Law and Politics at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University, Connecticut, and received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia in 1905. various times when partisan feeling has run high he has contributed to The Outlook political correspondence distinguished by its judicial temper and accuracy of observation. Both as a public servant and as a college teacher he has been interested in industrial questions and has brought to the legislative hall and to the lecture-room knowledge attained, not only from books, but also from men. His portrait as he appeared in the factory of which he writes is reproduced on the cover. He can be identified by his blue jumper and his red necktie.

MELIA JOSEPHINE BURR has been a fre

Aquent contributor of verse to The

Outlook.

The Red Gods are beckoning you West

~recreate this year in the greatest vacationland in the world

You out-of-door folks who ""long 'bout this time o' year" begin to feel the yearning for a tent pegged beside a stream and a whiff of blue wood-smoke, the swish of a fish line and the sound of creaking saddle leather-"hit the trail " -West!

Make 1921 the red-letter year of your life's vacation calendar! Our West is the world's greatest outdoors. It's your country-get out into it-know itfeel it!

Ride down sun-flooded, soul-stirring canyons; see memory-making nature pictures; row on rock-rimmed lakes; fish in fast flowing mountain streams; tramp down winding forest trails; loaf in wild-flower- flooded valleys ;[ stroll in the moonlight-out in "the great alone;" eat of the fat of the land, and sleep like a babe!

Such a vacation-a complete change in your everyday life, environment and climategetting back to Nature, tones

up and overhauls one, makes him physically and mentally fit.

Out along the Burlington there are scores of places par excellence. There's Colorado-the State which gave the word vacation a new meaning; Rocky Mountain National-Estes Park-a veritable vacation joyland; Yellowstone -the wonder spot of America; Glacier Park-holding out Utopian allurements; and the other National Parks-each strangely different from all the others; the "Dude" Ranch country of Wyoming; the Black Hills of South Dakota; Utah, "The Promised Land;" the charmed land of the Pacific Northwest; California, with her Yosemite and Big Trees.

Burlington
Route

The National Park Line

YOSEMITE

SALT LAKE ROUTE

Go one way, return another, without extra cost; stay as long as fancy dictates. Read about it-write for the bookillustrated below-that you want.

P. S. EUSTIS Passenger Traffic Manager C. B. & Q. R. R., Chicago

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK COLORADO

GRAND CONTON

COLORADO SPRINGS

COLORADO & SOUTHERN

ZION

Burlington Route

THE NATIONAL PARK LINE

BURLINGTON

ST.LOUIS

KANSAS CITY