CHAPTER IX

ALDRICH'S POETRY

"Enamored architect of airy rhyme."

HOUGH we have taken account in the preceding

THOUGH

pages of all, or nearly all, of Aldrich's short stories and novels, there is, perhaps, no better way to begin to speak of his poetry than to say a qualifying word or two of his prose; for wide as are the fields that lie between "Goliath" and "Fredericksburg," between, say, "Identity" and "The Story of a Bad Boy," they are all unmistakably part and parcel of the same Parnassian estate. His poetic art was in a peculiar way the quintessence of his prose manner, and the one without the other loses something in relief and distinction.

Writing many years ago to Mr. Howells, concerning one of the earlier novels of Mr. Henry James, then just published, Aldrich said: "Henry James has a plump and rosy prose style, and lots of observation. I envy him the easy grace with which he slips his pen through forty or fifty miles of aristocratic landscape." Aldrich's own prose style was certainly neither plump nor rosy. Rather it was slender, with a spare, athletic slenderness, and whatever ruddiness of complexion it exhibited was that of Psyche's "cheek's cold rose." Opulence of any sort, whether of

веб

Ú་ ་་ས་ས་སར ། ཀ་བབའ་་ར་་Sཔ་འ སྨན་བཅ་ ཀམ་ས ༦༤ཚ

The

And on the churchyard by the road, I know

༥。

ངx: ། དེ་ན་བ» ེངས་མ་ཟང་་ The stay,

no

while and moicchiorly
ཀྭ་བ་་་་་་་

3

night two

weary

summus

waning ourhead! Listen! Again the shrill-lipped bugles blow Where the swift currents of the river flow Pust: Frederichebung; far off the heavens me

ما

A signal rocket pierces the Sense night,

་་ན་ར་

ili spent stan upon the lown beneath:

Hark! _ the artillery marring

Trank! _

on the right,

the black squadrom wheeking down to Death!

Thomas Barley Aldrich.

FACSIMILE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF "FREDERICKSBURG"

"observation" or of expression, was never an attribute of his work. He was of the Flauberts, not of the Balzacs; his prose was the prose of talent rather than of genius; but it would be hard to find an English author who has made more of his native endowment. Certainly no American story-writer, not excepting Poe or Hawthorne, has had a cooler understanding of the mechanics of story-writing, or written a lighter, chaster, more elegant prose style. Pure English was his passion. He would rather, as he often said, "be censured in pure English than praised in bad." And his entire literary life was a protest against the easygoing methods of composition that he saw sowing the seeds of corruption in the writings of increasing numbers of his contemporaries. "It is so easy," he would say, "to write sloppily!"

His own prose was considered and refined to the last degree. He composed cautiously, making his way slowly and securely from phrase to phrase, from sentence to sentence, from paragraph to paragraph. The afflatus that descends at times even upon the writer of prose he distrusted, and confined with steady fingers upon the stops. His revision was more cautious still. The first draft would be interlined and erased and interlined again, until it became a puzzle to all eyes but his. Then it would be copied out fairly in his fine architectural hand, and the process repeated. Often, when a manuscript had been accepted by some magazine, he would recall it and send another draft, elaborately revised, in its place. His proof he casti

gated with equal thoroughness. But his revision was creative as well as critical, and often some choice felicity of vivid phrase made its first appearance, to the despair of the printer, in "foundry proof."

But it is easy to concentrate one's attention too exclusively upon the technical perfection of Aldrich's prose. The cool, polished page with its daintiness and gayety, its peculiar politeness, is touched with the breath of poesy. This is its distinction from the work of other talented writers of correct prose, and the elusive source of its quality and charm. Take, for an example, the few pages in "The Story of a Bad Boy" that tell of the death of Binny Wallace. The narrative is spare, and simple, almost meagre in its restraint. Yet it produces a breadth and depth of poignant impression that can spring only from the poetic tenderness of its inspiration. It is always so when he is at his best in prose. The women in his novels, to take another instance, are like the girls of an Horatian poet, like the blonde and brunette pair in his own "Corydon," not so much dramatized as lyrically painted with light swift touches; yet Prudence Palfrey, Margaret Slocum in "The Stillwater Tragedy," and the fair distraught young Queen of Sheba dwell in our memories with a charming freshness of personality, with a sweet and virginal fragrance, that the analytical novelist must vainly admire.

Perhaps Aldrich's most characteristic group of short stories is that in which the imaginative vitality lies in the shock of surprise at the end: "Marjorie Daw," "Mademoi