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Such a spell of self-searching has been in progress for several years past, and the critics of various countries have contributed theories of more or less lucidity and plausibility to the discussion. Their views of their own art, it appears, are quite as divergent as their views of the arts they more commonly deal with. One group argues, partly by direct statement and partly by attacking all other groups, that the one defensible purpose of the critic is to encourage the virtuous and oppose the sinful -- in brief, to police the fine arts and so hold them in tune with the moral order of the world. Another group, repudiating this constabulary functions, argues hotly that the arts have nothing to do with morality whatsoever -- that their concern is solely with pure beauty. A third group holds that the chief aspect of a work of art, particularly in the field of literature, is its aspect as a psychological document -- that if it doesn't help men to know themselves it is nothing. A fourth group reduces the thing to an exact science, and sets up standards that resemble algebraic formul~this is the group of metrists, of contrapuntists and of those who gabble of light-waves. And so, in order, follow groups five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, each with its theory and its proofs....The Spingarn-Croce-Carlyle-Goethe theory, for instance, throws a heavy burden upon the critic. It presupposes that he is a civilized and tolerant man, hospitable to all intelligible ideas and capable of reading them as he runs. This is a demand that at once rules out nine-tenths of the grownup sophomores who carry on the business of criticism in America. Their trouble is simply that they lack the intellectual resilience necessary for taking in ideas, and particularly new ideas. The only way they can ingest one is by transforming it into tfie nearest related formula -- usually a harsh and devastating operation. This fact accounts for their chronic inability to understand all that is most personal and original and hence most forceful and significant in the emerging literature of the country. They can get down what has been digested and redigested, and so brought into forms that they know, and carefully labelled by predecessors of their own sort -- but they exhibit alarm immediately they come into the presence of the extraordinary. Here we have an explanation of Brownell's alarmed appeal for a tightening of standards -- i. e., a larger respect for precedents, patterns, rubber-stamps -- and here we have an explanation of Phelps's inability to comprehend the colossal phenomenon of Dreiser, and of Boynton's childish nonsense about realism, and of Sherman's effort to apply the Espionage Law to the arts, and of More's querulous enmity to romanticism, and of all the fatuous pigeon-holing that passes for criticism in the more solemn literary weeklies.As practised by all such learned and diligent but essentially ignorant and unimaginative men, criticism is little more than a branch of homiletics. They judge a work of art, not by its clarity and sincerity, not by the force and charm of its ideas, not by the technical virtuosity of the artist, not by his originality and artistic courage, but simply and solely by his orthodoxy. If he is what is called a "right thinker," if he devotes himself to advocating the transient platitudes in a conventional manner, then he is worthy of respect. But if he lets fall the slightest hint that he is in doubt about any of them, or, worse still, that he is indifferent, then he is a scoundrel, and hence, by their theory, a bad artist. Such pious piffle is horribly familiar among us; I do not exaggerate its terms. You will find it running through the critical writings of practically all the dull fellows who combine criticism with tutoring; in the works of many of them it is stated in the plainest way and defended with much heat, theological and pedagogical. In its baldest form it shows itself in the doctrine that it is scandalous for an artist -- say a dramatist or a novelist -- to depict vice as attractive. The fact that vice, more often than not, undoubtedly is attractive -- else why should it ever gobble any of us? -- is disposed of with a lofty gesture. What of it? say these birchmen. The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.Against this notion American criticism makes but feeble headway. We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists: every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease. Thus the moral Privatdozenten have the crowd on their side, and it is difficult to shake their authority, even the vicious are still in favor of crying vice down. "Here is a novel," says the artist. "Why didn't you write a tract?" roars the professor -- and down the chute go novel and novelist. "This girl is pretty," says the painter. "But she has left off her undershirt," protests the head-master -- and off goes the poor dauber's head. At its mildest, this balderdash takes the form of the late Hamilton Wright Mabie's White List of Books; at its worst, it is comstockery, an idiotic and abominable thing. Genuine criticism is as impossible to such inordinately narrow and cocksure men as music is to a man who is stone-deaf. The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative pasFion; as Spingarn says, "esthetic judgment and artistic creation are instinct with the same vital life." This is why all the best criticism of the world has been written by men who have had within them not only the reflective and analytical faculty of critics but also the gusto of artists -- Goethe, Carlyle, Lessing, Schlegel, Sainte-Beuve, and, to drop a story or two, Hazlitt, Hermann Bahr, Georg Brandes and James Huneker. Huneker, tackling Also sprach Zarathustra, revealed its content in illuminating flashes. But tackled by Paul Elmer More, it became no more than a dull student's exercise, ill-naturedly corrected.Criticism, as humanly practised, must needs fall a good deal short of the intuitive re-creation of beauty, and what is more, it must go a good deal further. For one thing, it must be interpretation in terms that are not only exact but are also comprehensible to the vulgar, else it will leave the original mystery as dark as before -- and once interpretation comes in, paraphrase and transliteration comes in. What is recondite must be made plainer; the transcendental, to some extent at least, must be done into common modes of thinking. Well, what are morality, trochaics, hexameters, movements, historical principles, psychological maxims, the dramatic unities -- what are all these save common modes of thinking, short cuts, rubber stamps, words of one syllable? Moreover, beauty as we know it in this world is by no means an apparition in vacua. It has its social, its political, even its moral implications. The finale of Beethoven's C minor symphony is not only colossal as musicit is also colossal as revolt and defiance; it says something against something. Yet more, the springs of beauty are not within itself alone, nor even in genius alone, but often in things without. Brahms wrote his Deutsches Requiem, not only because he was a great artist, but also because he was a good German. And in Nietzsche there are times when the divine afflatus takes a back seat, and the spirochaete have the floor..I think the best feasible practise of criticism at least in America, is to be found in certain chapters of Huneker, a critic of vastly more solid influence and of infinitely more value to the arts than all the grating pedagogues since Rufus Griswold. Here, as in the case of Poe, a sensitive and intelligent artist recreates the work of other artists, but there also comes to the ceremony a man of the world, and the things he has to say are apposite and instructive too. To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment. To dispute the categories is to set up a new anti-categorical category. And to admire the work of Shakespeare is to be interested in his handling of blank verse, his social aspirations, his shot-gun marriage and his frequent concessions to the bombastic frenzy of his actors, and to have some curiosity about Mr. W. H. The really competent critic must be an empiricist. He must conduct his exploration with whatever means lie within the bounds of his personal limitation. He must produce his effects with whatever tools will work. If pills fail, he gets out his saw. If the saw won't cut, he seizes a dub..The function of a genuine critic of the arts is to provoke the reaction between the work of art and the spectator. The spectator, untutored, stands unmoved; he sees the work of art, but it fails to make any intelligible impression on him; if the were spontaneously sensitive to it, there would be no need for criticism. But now comes the critic with his catalysis. He makes the work of art live for the spectator; he makes the spectator live for the work of art. Out of the process comes understanding, appreciation, intelligent enjoyment -- and that is precisely what the artist tried to produce.Naturally enough, this moral obsession has given a strong colour to American literature. In truth, it has coloured it so brilliantly that American literature is set off sharply from all other literatures. In none other will you find so wholesale and ecstatic a sacrifice of aesthetic ideas, of all the fine gusto of passion and beauty, to notions of what is meet, proper and nice. From the books of grisly sermons that were the first American contribution to letters down to that amazing literature of "inspiration" which now flowers so prodigiously, with two literary Presidents among its chief virtuosi, one observes no relaxation of the moral pressure. In the history of every other literature there have been periods of what might be called moral innocence periods in which a naif pose de vivre has broken through all concepts of duty and responsibility, and the wonder and glory of the the universe have been hymned with unashamed zest. The age of Shakespeare comes to mind at once: the violence of the Puritan reaction offers a measure of the pendulum's wild swing. But in America no such general rising of the blood has ever been seen. The literature of the nation, even the literature of the enlightened minority, has been under harsh Puritan restraints from the beginning, and despite a few stealthy efforts at revolt -- usually quite without artistic value or even common honesty, as in the case of the cheap fiction magazines and that of smutty plays on Broadway, and always very short-lived -- it shows not the slightest sign of emancipating itself today. The American, try as he will, can never imagine any work of the imagination as wholly devoid of moral content. It must either tend toward the promotion of virtue, or be suspect and abominableIf any doubt of this is in your mind, turn to the critical artides in the newspapers and literary weeklies; you will encounter enough proofs in a month's explorations to convince you forever. A novel or a play is judged among us, not by its dignity of conception, its artistic honesty, its perfection of workmanship, but almost entirely by its orthodoxy of doctrine, its platitudinousness, its usefulness as a moral tract. A digest of the review of such a book as David Graham Phillips' Susan Lenox or of such a play as Ibsen's Hedda Gabler would make astounding reading for a Continental European. Not only the childish incompetents who write for the daily press, but also most of our critics of experience and reputation, seem quite unable to estimate a piece of writing as a piece of writing, a work of art as as work of art; they almost inevitably drag in irrelevant gabble as to whether this or that personage in it is respectable, or this or that situation in accordance with the national notions of what is edifying and nice. Fully ninetenths of the reviews of Dreiser's The Titan, without question the best American novel of its year, were devoted chiefly to indignant denunciations of the morals of Frank Cowperwood, its central character. That the man was superbly imagined and magnificently depicted, that he stood out from the book in all the flashing vigour of life, that his creation was an artistic achievement of a very high and difficult order -- these facts seem to have made no impression upon the reviewers whatever. They were Puritans write ing for Puritans, and all they could see in Cowperwood was an anti-Puritan, and in his creator another. It will remain for Europeans, I daresay, to discover the true stature of The Titan, as it remained for Europeans to discover the true stature of Sister Carrie.It is easy to see, in conclusion, why Dickens felt his novel to be a 'tragi-comedy' (24). Poor Pip yearns to be a member of his rural, working world, but finds he cannot because it ignores the realities of the modern world and has no notions of 'higher things.' He would like to be genteel like Miss Havisham and Estella, but finds himself incapable of their aristocratic coldness. Similarly his depth of understanding and compassion forbid his becoming a capitalist. None of the urban lower class choose their position, and it has little if any appeal to Pip. But he also finds himself somewhat disturbed by the unreconciled double-sidedness, sort of unconscious division common to his friends of the working class. The novel ends a tragedy according to classical definitions, because Pip ends unreconciled to any of his options, an aloof, solitary bachelor. To be sure he obtains work with Clarriker and Co. and his comrade Herbert, visits Joe and Biddy and 'young Pip,' and comes to an understanding with Estella, but he is somehow in a greater sense, alone.Dickens summons from his readers a remarkable pathos for London's lower classes. In Chapter 20, Pip recounts Jaggers' encounter on the street with several of his clients. Disreputable, transparently villainous, these pitiable characters nevertheless evoke from Dickens' readers a feeling of sympathy. Part of this identification the reader feels for them lies in the fact that they are clearly capable human beings; their tragedy lies simply in the fact that the Victorian work ethic allows no sympathy for 'unsuccessful' men in society; in some way it is they, and not industrial capitalism, who are felt to be at fault for their position. The author of Great Expectations, it may be said, disagrees. Clearly it is London's economic structure which makes them what they are; the novelist hopes to make clear to his readers that the miserable are not guilty in any way of choosing their present social station. But never are they cast as good or virtuous, eitherDickens' middle class possesses almost schizophrenic dichotomies of character. Its rational half cherishes and treasures a very detached and reserved, 'rational' manner, which Jaggers and Wemmick epitomize; Jaggers' extreme disinclination to recommend anyone or anything, his disdain of emotion or 'unbusinesslike airs, and his late-revealed support of the helpless (evidenced in his support of Molly, Estella's mother, after her breakdown) serve to make him an exceedingly multifaceted character. Wemmick is very much the same, and even a better example: the dual character of the clerk mystifies Pip at first. This is perhaps best evidenced in Chapter 48, when Jaggers, Wemmick, and Pip dine together. In front of Jaggers, Wemmick assumes a tacit, efficient but impersonal manner: 'Wemmick drew his wine when it came round, quite as a matter of businessjust as he might have drawn his salary when that came roundand with his eyes on his chief, sat in a state of perpetual readiness for cross-examination.' (404). Pip, bewildered, supposes himself to have dined somehow with Wemmick's 'wrong twin all the timeonly externally like the Wemmick of Walworth.' (404). Pip's bewilderment is compounded by the suddenness of Wemmick's malleability: 'we had not gone half a dozen yards down Gerrard-street in the Walworth direction before I found that I was walking arm-in-arm with the right twin, and that the wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air.' (Calder, 404). Wemmick discusses 'portable property' with the utmost pragmatism and respect, while simultaneously living in his 'castle' of knickknacks, gadgets and toys which cherish the human spiritIf one were to judge Great Expectations by these standards, the play contains elements both of comedy and tragedy, because Pip exists as a character of many detached worlds. It is possible to find five complete and discrete societies in the England of Dickens' novel; these five summarize the whole of the transitional period known to postmodern critics as 'Victorian.' The two representatives of the old world's feudal order, are those of village labor (Joe and Biddy) and aristocracy (Mrs. Havisham and Estella); of the new world one sees the urban poor (Jaggers' clientele and Pip's 'Avenger), the working class (Jaggers and Wemmick), and the entrepreneurs/capitalists(Compeyson and Pumblechook). Pip in his time samples all five circles, belonging variously to each over the course of the novel, making it very difficult to assess his 'reintegration into society' at the end it is certainly impossible (and almost certainly undesirable) that he should become integrated into them all, so he must choose his one path; Dickens leaves to his readers evaluation of Pip's success.It has been said nobody ever wrote a perfect novel, except Charles Dickens. Certainly his popularity stems from the meticulous care with which he treats his characters; Lev Tolstoy went so far as to call this regard the author held for his creations to be 'love' (Calder, 11). Dickens' caricatures of the men and women of Victorian society ring true because the circumstances of his London are in so many ways comparable to modern Western societies. Dickens' criticisms of Victorian England are no less harsh than Karl Marx's dialectic attack, or Friedrich Nietsche's epistemological one; Great Expectations is a superbly crafted free-form philosophical treatise; Dickens was a master novelist, and used the form to its utmost to effect a meaningful study of how one should live in such a world. Because of its relevance to contemporary society, moreover, it is important to note Dickens' solutions to the dilemmas faced by his moral character, PipThe compromise of xxxx satisfied neither the North nor the South. The admission of California as a free State was regarded by Calhoun as fatal to the balance between the free and the slave States, and thereafter a fierce agitation sprang up for the recovery of this loss of balance, and ultimately for Southern preponderance, which resulted in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska war, and the civil war. The fugitive slave law was hateful to the North not only because it was cruel and degrading, but because it was seen to be a move formed for nationalizing slavery. It was unsatisfactory to the South because it was deemed inadequate in its provisions, and because the South did not believe the North would execute it in good faith. So unstable did the compromise seem that in less than a year after the passage of all its measures, Henry Clay and forty-four Senators and Representatives united in a manifesto declaring that they would support no man for office who was not known to be opposed to any disturbance of the settlements of the compromise. When, in February, xxxx, the recaptured fugitive slave, Burns, was rescued from the United States officers in Boston, Clay urged the investment of the President with extraordinary power to enforce the law.Henry Clay was a patriot, a typical American. The republic and its preservation were the passions of his life. Like Lincoln, who was born in the State of his adoption, he was willing to make almost any sacrifice for the maintenance of the Union. He had no sympathy with the system of slavery. There is no doubt that he would have been happy in the belief that it was in the way of gradual and peaceful extinction. With him, it was always the Union before state rights and before slavery. Unlike Lincoln, he had not the clear vision to see that the republic could not endure half slave and half free. He believed that the South, appealing to the compromises of the Constitution, would sacrifice the Union before it would give up slavery, and in fear of this menace he begged the North to conquer its prejudices. We are not liable to overrate his influence as a compromising pacificator from xxxx to xxxx. History will no doubt say that it was largely due to him that the war on the Union was postponed to a date when its success was impossibleIt was the fugitive slave law that brought the North face to face with slavery nationalized, and it was the fugitive slave law that produced Uncle Tom's Cabin. The effect of this story was immediate and electric. It went straight to the hearts of tens of thousands of people who had never before considered slavery except as a political institution for which they had no personal responsibility. What was this book, and how did it happen to produce such an effect? It is true that it struck into a time of great irritation and agitation, but in one sense there was nothing new in it. The facts had all been published. For twenty years abolition tracts, pamphlets, newspapers, and books had left little to be revealed, to those who cared to read, as to the nature of slavery or its economic aspects. The evidence was practically all in,--supplied largely by the advertisements of Southern newspapers and by the legislation of the slaveholding States,--but it did not carry conviction; that is, the sort of conviction that results in action. The subject had to be carried home to the conscience. Pamphleteering, convention-holding, sermons, had failed to do this. Even the degrading requirements of the fugitive slave law, which brought shame and humiliation, had not sufficed to fuse the public conscience, emphasize the necessity of obedience to the moral law, and compel recognition of the responsibility of the North for slavery. Evidence had not done this, passionate appeals had not done it, vituperation had not done it. What sort of presentation of the case would gain the public ear and go to the heart? If Mrs. Stowe, in all her fervor, had put forth first the facts in The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which so buttressed her romance, the book would have had no more effect than had followed the like compilations and arraignments. What was needed? If we can discover this, we shall have the secret of this epoch-making novel.At the age of twenty-four the author was married and went to live in Cincinnati, where her husband held a chair in the Lane Theological Seminary. There for the first time she was brought into relations with the African race and saw the effects of slavery. She visited slaveholders in Kentucky and had friends among them. In some homes she saw the "patriarchal" institution at its best. The Beecher family were anti-slavery, but they had not been identified with the abolitionists, except perhaps Edward, who was associated with the murdered Lovejoy. It was long a reproach brought by the abolitionists against Henry Ward Beecher that he held entirely aloof from their movement. At Cincinnati, however, the personal aspects of the case were brought home to Mrs. Stowe. She learned the capacities and peculiarities of the negro race. They were her servants; she taught some of them; hunted fugitives applied to her; she ransomed some by her own efforts; every day there came to her knowledge stories of the hunger for freedom, of the ruthless separation of man and wife and mother and child, and of the heroic sufferings of those who ran away from the fearful doom of those "sold down South." These things crowded upon her mind and awoke her deepest compassion. But what could she do against all the laws, the political and commercial interests, the great public apathy? Relieve a case here and there, yes. But to dwell upon the gigantic evil, with no means of making head against it, was to invite insanitAs late as xxxx, when Professor Stowe was called to Bowdoin College, and the family removed to Brunswick, Maine, Mrs. Stowe had not felt impelled to the duty she afterwards undertook. "In fact, it was a sort of general impression upon her mind, as upon that of many humane people in those days, that the subject was so dark and painful a one, so involved in difficulty and obscurity, so utterly beyond human hope or help, that it was of no use to read, or think, or distress one's self about it." But when she reached New England the excitement over the fugitive slave law was at its height. There was a panic in Boston among the colored people settled there, who were daily fleeing to Canada. Every mail brought her pitiful letters from Boston, from Illinois, and elsewhere, of the terror and despair caused by the law. Still more was the impressed by the apathy of the Christian world at the North, and surely, she said, the people did not understand what the "system" was. Appeals were made to her, who had some personal knowledge of the subject, to take up her pen. The task seemed beyond her in every way. She was not strong, she was in the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young infant, with pupils to whom she was giving daily lessons, and the limited income of the family required the strictest economy. The dependence was upon the small salary of Professor Stowe, and the few dollars she could earn by an occasional newspaper or magazine article. But the theme burned in her mind, and finally took this shape: at least she would write some sketches and show the Christian world what slavery really was, and what the system was that they were defending. She wanted to do this with entire fairness, showing all the mitigations of the "patriarchal" system, and all that individuals concerned in it could do to alleviate its misery. While pondering this she came by chance, in a volume of an anti-slavery magazine, upon the authenticated account of the escape of a woman with her child on the ice across the Ohio River from Kentucky. She began to meditate. The faithful slave husband in Kentucky, who had refused to escape from a master who trusted him, when he was about to be sold "down river," came to her as a pattern of Uncle Tom, and the scenes of the story began to form themselves in her mind. "The first part of the book ever committed to writing [this is the statement of Mrs. Stowe] was the death of Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost as a tangible vision to her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little church in Brunswick. She was perfectly overcome by it, and could scarcely restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her frame. She hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away, read it to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. The little fellows broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through his sobs, Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world! From that time the story can less be said to have been composed by her than imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents, conversations rushed upon her with a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. The book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no denial."When two or three chapters were written she wrote to her friend, Dr. Bailey, of Washington, the editor of The National Era, to which she had contributed, that she was planning a story that might run through several numbers of the Era. The story was at once applied for, and thereafter weekly installments were sent on regularly, in spite of all cares and distractions. The installments were mostly written during the morning, on a little desk in a corner of the dining-room of the cottage in Brunswick, subject to all the interruptions of house-keeping, her children bursting into the room continually with the importunity of childhood. But they did not break the spell or destroy her abstraction. With a smile and a word and a motion of the hand she would wave them off, and keep on in her magician's work. Long afterwards they recalled this, dimly understood at the time, and wondered at her power of concentration. Usually at night the chapters were read to the family, who followed the story with intense feeling. The narrative ran on for nine months, exciting great interest among the limited readers of the Era, and gaining sympathetic words from the anti-slavery people, but without making any wide impression on the public.We may pause here in the narrative to note two things: the story was not the work of a novice, and it was written out of abundant experience and from an immense mass of accumulated thought and material. Mrs. Stowe was in her fortieth year. She had been using her pen since she was twelve years old, in extensive correspondence, in occasional essays, in short stories and sketches, some of which appeared in a volume called The Mayflower, published in xxxx, and for many years her writing for newspapers and periodicals had added appreciably to the small family income. She was in the maturity of her intellectual powers, she was trained in the art of writing, and she had, as Walter Scott had when he began the Waverley Novels at the age of forty-three, abundant store of materials on which to draw. To be sure, she was on fire with a moral purpose, but she had the dramatic instinct, and she felt that her object would not be reached by writing an abolition tract."In shaping her material the author had but one purpose, to show the institution of slavery truly, just as it existed. She had visited in Kentucky; had formed the acquaintance of people who were just, upright, and generous, and yet slave-holders. She had heard their views, and appreciated their situation; she felt that justice required that their difficulties should be recognized and their virtues acknowledged. It was her object to show that the evils of slavery were the inherent evils of a bad system, and not always the fault of those who had become involved in it and were its actual administrators. Then she was convinced that the presentation of slavery alone, in its most dreadful forms, would be a picture of such unrelieved horror and darkness as nobody could be induced to look at. Of set purpose, she sought to light up the darkness by humorous and grotesque episodes, and the presentation of the milder and more amusing phases of slavery, for which her recollection of the never-failing wit and drollery of her former colored friends in Ohio gave her abundant material." For this story Mrs. Stowe received from the Era the sum of three hundred dollars. Before it was finished it attracted the attention of Mr. J. P. Jewett, of Boston, a young and then unknown publisher, who offered to issue it in book form. His offer was accepted, but as the tale ran on he became alarmed at its length, and wrote to the author that she was making the story too long for a one-volume novel; that the subject was unpopular; that people would not willingly hear much about it; that one short volume might possibly sell, but that if it grew to two that might prove a fatal obstacle to its success. Mrs. Stowe replied that she did not make the story, that the story made itself, and that she could not stop it till it was done. The publisher hesitated. It is said that a competent literary critic to whom he submitted it sat up all night with the novel, and then reported, "The story has life in it; it will sell." Mr. Jewett proposed to Professor Stowe to publish it on half profits if he would share the expenses. This offer was declined, for the Stowes had no money to advance, and the common royalty of ten per cent on the sales was acceptedMrs. Stowe was not interested in this business transaction. She was thinking only of having the book circulated for the effect she had at heart. The intense absorption in the story held her until the virtual end in the death of Uncle Tom, and then it seemed as if the whole vital force had left her. She sank into a profound discouragement. Would this appeal, which she had written with her heart's blood, go for nothing, as all the prayers and tears and strivings had already gone? When the last proof sheets left her hands, "it seemed to her that there was no hope; that nobody would read, nobody would pity; that this frightful system, which had already pursued its victims into the free States, might at last even threaten them in Canada." Resolved to leave nothing undone to attract attention to her cause, she wrote letters and ordered copies of her novel sent to men of prominence who had been known for their anti-slavery sympathies,--to Prince Albert, Macaulay, Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley, and Lord Carlisle. Then she waited for the resultShe had not long to wait. The success of the book was immediate. Three thousand copies were sold the first day, within a few days ten thousand copies had gone, on the 1st of April a second edition went to press, and thereafter eight presses running day and night were barely able to keep pace with the demand for it. Within a year three hundred thousand copies were sold. No work of fiction ever spread more quickly throughout the reading community or awakened a greater amount of public feeling. It was read by everybody, learned and unlearned, high and low, for it was an appeal to universal human sympathy, and the kindling of this spread the book like wildfire. At first it seemed to go by acclamation. But this was not altogether owing to sympathy with the theme. I believe that it was its power as a novel that carried it largely. The community was generally apathetic when it was not hostile to any real effort to be rid of slavery. This presently appeared. At first there were few dissenting voices from the chorus of praise. But when the effect of the book began to be evident it met with an opposition fiercer and more personal than the great wave of affectionate thankfulness which greeted it at first. The South and the defenders and apologists of slavery everywhere were up in arms. It was denounced in pulpit and in press, and some of the severest things were said of it at the North. The leading religious newspaper of the country, published in New York, declared that it was "anti-Christian.Mrs. Stowe was twice astonished: first by its extraordinary sale, and second by the quarter from which the assault on it came. She herself says that her expectations were strikingly different from the facts. "She had painted slaveholders as amiable, generous, and just. She had shown examples among them of the noblest and most beautiful traits of character; had admitted fully their temptations, their perplexities, and their difficulties, so that a friend of hers who had many relatives in the South wrote to her: Your book is going to be the great pacificator; it will unite both North and South. Her expectation was that the professed abolitionists would denounce it as altogether too mild in its dealings with slaveholders. To her astonishment, it was the extreme abolitionists who received, and the entire South who rose up against it.There is something almost amusing in Mrs. Stowe's honest expectation that the deadliest blow the system ever suffered should have been received thankfully by those whose traditions, education, and interests were all bound up in it. And yet from her point of view it was not altogether unreasonable. Her blackest villain and most loathsome agent of the system, Legree, was a native of Vermont. All her wrath falls upon the slave- traders, the auctioneers, the public whippers, and the overseers, and all these persons and classes were detested by the Southerners to the point of loathing, and were social outcasts. The slave- traders and the overseers were tolerated as perhaps necessary in the system, but they were never admitted into respectable society. This feeling Mrs. Stowe regarded as a condemnation of the system.Pecuniary reward was the last thing that Mrs. Stowe expected for her disinterested labor, but it suits the world's notion of the fitness of things that this was not altogether wanting. For the millions of copies of Uncle Tom scattered over the world the author could expect nothing, but in her own country her copyright yielded her a moderate return that lifted her out of poverty and enabled her to pursue her philanthropic and literary career. Four months after the publication of the book Professor Stowe was in the publisher's office, and Mr. Jewett asked him how much he expected to receive. "I hope," said Professor Stowe, with a whimsical smile, "that it will be enough to buy my wife a silk dress." The publisher handed him a check for ten thousand dollars.Before Mrs. Stowe had a response to the letters accompanying the books privately sent to England, the novel was getting known there. Its career in Great Britain paralleled its success in America. In April a copy reached London in the hands of a gentleman who had taken it on the steamer to read. He gave it to Mr. Henry Vizetelly, who submitted it to Mr. David Bogue, a man known for his shrewdness and enterprise. He took a night to consider it, and then declined it, although it was offered to him for five pounds. A Mr. Gilpin also declined it. It was then submitted to Mr. Salisbury, a printer. This taster for the public sat up with the book till four o'clock in the morning, alternately weeping and laughing. Fearing, however, that this result was due to his own weakness, he woke up his wife, whom he describes as a rather strong-minded woman, and finding that the story kept her awake and made her also laugh and cry, he thought it might safely be printed. It seems, therefore, that Mr. Vizetelly ventured to risk five pounds, and the volume was brought out through the nominal agency of Clarke & Company. In the first week an edition of seven thousand was worked off. It made no great stir until the middle of June, but during July it sold at the rate of one thousand a week. By the 20th of August the demand for it was overwhelming. The printing firm was then employing four hundred people in getting it out, and seventeen printing-machines, besides hand-presses. Already one hundred and fifty thousand copies were sold. Mr. Vizetelly disposed of his interest, and a new printing firm began to issue monster editions. About this time the publishers awoke to the fact that any one was at liberty to reprint the book, and the era of cheap literature was initiated, founded on American reprints which cost the publisher no royalty. A shilling edition followed the one-and-sixpence, and then one complete for sixpence. As to the total sale, Mr. Sampson Low reports: "From April to December, xxxx, twelve different editions (not reissues) were published, and within the twelve months of its first appearance eighteen different London publishing houses were engaged in supplying the great demand that had set in, the total number of editions being forty, varying from fine illustrated editions at 15s., 10s., and 7s. 6d. to the cheap popular editions of 1s. 9d. and 6d. After carefully analyzing these editions and weighing probabilities with ascertained facts, I am able pretty confidently to say that the aggregate number of copies circulated in Great Britain and the colonies exceeds one and a half millions." Later, abridgments were published.Almost simultaneously with this furor in England the book made its way on the Continent. Several translations appeared in Germany and France, and for the authorized French edition Mrs. Stowe wrote a new preface, which served thereafter for most of the European editions. I find no record of the order of the translations of the book into foreign languages, but those into some of the Oriental tongues did not appear till several years after the great excitement. The ascertained translations are into twenty-three tongues, namely: Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Hungarian, Illyrian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, modern Greek, Russian, Servian, Siamese, Spanish, Swedish, Wallachian, and Welsh. Into some of these languages several translations were made. In xxxx the British Museum contained thirty-five editions of the original text, and eight editions of abridgments or adaptations.The story was dramatized in the United States in August, xxxx, without the consent or knowledge of the author, and was played most successfully in the leading cities, and subsequently was acted in every capital in Europe. Mrs. Stowe had neglected to secure the dramatic rights, and she derived no benefit from the great popularity of a drama which still holds the stage. From the phenomenal sale of a book which was literally read by the whole world, the author received only the ten per cent on the American editions, and by the laws of her own country her copyright expired before her deathThe narrative of the rise and fortunes of this book would be incomplete without some reference to the response that the author received from England and the Continent, and of her triumphant progress through the British Isles. Her letters accompanying the special copies were almost immediately replied to, generally in terms of enthusiastic and fervent thankfulness for the book, and before midsummer her mail contained letters from all classes of English society. In some of them appeared a curious evidence of the English sensitiveness to criticism. Lord Carlisle and Sir Arthur Helps supplemented their admiration by a protest against the remark in the mouth of one of the characters that "slaves are better off than a large class of the population of England." This occurred in the defense of the institution by St. Clare, but it was treated by the British correspondents as the opinion of Mrs. Stowe. The charge was disposed of in Mrs. Stowe's reply: "The remark on that subject occurs in the dramatic part of the book, in the mouth of an intelligent Southerner. As a fair-minded person, bound to state for both sides all that could be said, in the person of St. Clare, the best that could be said on that point, and what I know IS in fact constantly reiterated, namely, that the laboring class of the South are in many respects, as to physical comfort, in a better condition than the poor in England. This is the slaveholder's stereo-typed apology; a defense it cannot be, unless two wrongs make one right."At a reception in Stafford House, London, the Duchess of Sutherland presented her with a massive gold bracelet, which has an interesting history. It is made of ten oval links in imitation of slave fetters. On two of the links were the inscriptions "March 25, xxxx," the date of the abolition of the slave-trade, and "August 1, xxxx," the date of the abolition of slavery in all British territory. The third inscription is "562,848--March 19, xxxx," the date of the address of the women of England to the women of America on slavery, and the number of the women who signed. It was Mrs. Stowe's privilege to add to these inscriptions the following: "Emancipation D. C. Apl. 16, '62;" "President's Proclamation Jan. 1, '63;" "Maryland free Oct. 13, '64;" "Missouri free Jan. 11, '65;" and on the clasp link, "Constitution amended by Congress Jan. 31, '65. Constitutional Amendment ratified." Two of the links are vacant. What will the progress of civilization in America offer for the links nine and ten? One of the most remarkable documents which resulted from Uncle Tom was an address from the women of England to the women of America, acknowledging the complicity in slavery of England, but praying aid in removing from the world "our common crimes and common dishonor," which was presented to Mrs. Stowe in xxxx. It was the result of a meeting at Stafford House, and the address, composed by Lord Shaftesbury, was put into the hands of canvassers in England and on the Continent, and as far as Jerusalem. The signatures of 562,848 women were obtained, with their occupations and residences, from the nobility on the steps of the throne down to maids in the kitchen. The address is handsomely engrossed on vellum. The names are contained in twenty-six massive volumes, each fourteen inches high by nine in breadth and three inches thick, inclosed in an oak case. It is believed that this is the most numerously signed address in existence. The value of the address, with so many names collected in haphazard fashion, was much questioned, but its use was apparent in the height of the civil war, when Mrs. Stowe replied to it in one of the most vigorous and noble appeals that ever came from her pen. This powerful reply made a profound impression in England.
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