REVERBERATOR.*
THE genius of our day has a great tendency to thin off into the finest possible layers of impressionism. Mr. Henry James himself becomes thinner and thinner in his studies, though- with the tenuity there is still the same subtlety and delicacy of discrimination which we used to admire in his more con. siderable efforts. One of the •first books which he wrote was a study of American character in its relation to the most • The Beverberator. By Henry James. 2 vols. London : Macmillan and 00.
fastidious type of the old French aristocracy ; but compara- tively what a large world was brought before us in The American, and what a very small world is brought before us in The Reverberator I In The American there was a great breadth of life and passion ; in The Reverberator there is but one phase of life, and no touch even of passion. The skill is as great as ever, but the difference in the delineation of American character is the difference between a study of life which is full and even massive, and a study of life which has either shrunk into a phase of vulgar professionalism or has never expanded beyond that neutral stage in which the higher interests are all completely undeveloped. And so, too, with regard to the study of French life. The type of character illustrating the ancien regime as it was painted in The American, was certainly not admirable, but it was marked by prejudices and passions on a great scale ; the type of character of the ancien regime as it is painted in The Reverberator, is little more than one well skilled in false compliments and fastidious conventional taste, all coloured by the passion for hereditary dignity. However, we must not quarrel with our literary food when it is so exquisite in kind as Mr. Henry James provides. And certainly it would be well-nigh impos- sible to succeed more completely in what he has attempted than Mr. Henry James has succeeded here. He has brought before us the Paris correspondent of a successful American " society " paper in the most vivid manner ; he has made us see exactly what such a man aims at, and how incapable he himself is of even furnishing to his paper what he aims at, without the help of others who know more than he knows of the sort of pangs that will be inflicted in the process of satisfying the American appetite for French gossip ; and he has made us see at the same time how entirely inno- cent is the American class for which this kind of reading is provided, of any sort of insight into the immoral machinery by which such gossip is obtained, as well as of any power of understanding what wounds it inflicts on the victims of the process. A happier sketch cannot be imagined than that of Mr. George Flack, with his single-eyed devotion to the interests of the Reverberator,—though he is not above killing two birds with one stone, and doing what he can to establish a feud between the young lady he admires and the French family into which she is about to marry, by the very same stroke of business by which he hopes to stimulate the sale of his paper. Here is Mr. Flack's conception of what his countrymen look for in a society paper, and what he intends, so far as it depends upon him, to supply :—
"' Oh, bother the scenery ! I want to tell you something about myself, if I could flatter myself that you would take any interest in it.' He had thrust his cane, waist-high, into the low wall of the terrace, and he leaned against it, screwing the point gently round with both hands.—' I'll take an interest if I can understand,' said Francie.= You can understand easy enough, if you'll try. I've got some news from America to-day that has pleased me very much. The Reverberator has taken a jump.'—This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. Taken a jump ? she repeated.—' It has gone straight up. It's in the second hundred thousand.'—' Hundred thousand dollars ?' said Francie.—' No, Miss Francie, copies. That's the circulation. But the dollars are footing up too.'—' And do they all come to you ?'—' Precious few of them ! I wish they did ; it's a pleasant property.'—' Then it isn't yours ?' she asked, turning round to him. It was an impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife.—' Mine ? You don't mean to say you suppose I own it !' George Flack exclaimed. The light projected upon her innocence by these words was so strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly= It's a pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for granted. Do you think property grows on you, like a moustache. Well, it seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I shouldn't be stumping round here ; I'd give my attention to another branch of the business. That is, I would give my attention to all, but I wouldn't go round with the cart. But I'm going to get hold of it, and I want you to help me,' the young man went on ; that's just what I wanted to speak to you about. It's a big thing already and I mean to make it bigger : the most universal society-paper the world has seen. That's where the future lies, and the man who sees it first is the man who'll make his pile. It's a field for enlightened enterprise that hasn't yet began to be worked.' He continued, glowing, almost suddenly, with his idea, and one of his eyes half closed itself knowingly, in a way that was habitual with him when he talked consecutively. The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the prospectus mingling with the accent of passion. But it was not droll to Francie ; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof of the way Mr. Flack saw every- thing in its largest relations. There are ten thousand things to do that haven't been done, and I am going to do them. The
society news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the prominent members themselves (oh, they can be fixed—you'll see!) from day to day and from hour to hour, and served up at every breakfast-table in the United States—that's what the American people want, and that's what the American people are going to have. I wouldn't say it to every one, but I don't mind telling you, that I consider I have about as fine a sense as any one of what's going to be required in future over there. I'm going for the secrets, the chronique intime, as they say here ; what the people want is just what isn't told, and I'm going to tell it. Oh, they're bound to have the plums ! That's about played out, any way, the idea of sticking up a sign of " private," and thinking you can keep the place to yourself. You can't do it—you can't keep out the light of the Press. Now what I am going to do is to set up the biggest lamp yet made, and to make it shine all over the place. We'll see who's private then ! I'll make them crowd in themselves with the information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it's a job in which you can give me a lovely push.'"
But half the power of the picture depends on the skill with which the thick - skinned impenetrability of the special correspondent's nature is delineated, and the complete inno- cence with which his American friends, Mr. Dosson and his two daughters, regard this enterprise of his, which they look upon purely in the light of a bold commercial speculation of the moat legitimate kind. Probably nobody ever attempted before to paint a creature at once so amiable, so shrewd, and so vacant-minded as Mr. Dosson. Of him it is impossible to say that he is vulgar, because he is completely destitute of the kind of pretentiousness which chiefly constitutes vul- garity, and yet it is equally impossible to say that he is a. gentleman, because he is equally destitute of the refinements of perception and feeling which constitute a gentleman. He is simply an affectionate father with a keen eye for investments, and no intellectual interest of his own of any sort or kind, but entirely wanting in any feeling of inferiority to those who rank higher in society than he does, and in any pride or self- inflation as regards his own wealth. Nothing could better explain the neutral character of the people amongst whom the Reverberator is popular, than Mr. Dosson's admira- tion for George Flack, and his perfect incompetence to understand the enormities of which these purveyors of private gossip to the public, are guilty. Equally skilful in its way is the picture of the elder sister who is so determined that she will secure a great future for her younger sister,—the darling of the family,—and who has a vague, but very vague, impression that she must aim much higher than Mr. George Flack, and that Mr. George Flack is really beneath them, though she hardly knows why. Moreover, the beauty herself, with her loyal wish to help her old friend in his business speculation as a sort of compensation for her refusal of his suit, and the trouble into which this brings her by making her the means.
of betraying to the ruthless special correspondent all sorts of secrets concerning the family into which she is about to marry, is drawn with a very subtle and delicate touch.
Like her father, she is neither refined nor vulgar ; but she has, nevertheless, the genuinely feminine tenderness of feeling which softens the effect of her innocent blundering, and she has, besides, a sort of proud sincerity which lends to her inno- cence a tinge of dignity. The scene in which she sustains the passionate reproaches of all her future sisters-in-law, and longs in vain for one kind glance from the heart-broken old father of the man she is about to marry, is as skilful in its small way as any that Mr. Henry James has ever painted.
But, after all, the story is, as we have said, one of the thinnest performances which was ever marked throughout by real genius. Nothing slighter can well be imagined. And yet, slight as it is, it gives us an insight into the comparative harmlessness of pm-pose which underlies a good deal of the Yankee pushingness, and into the blank neutrality of feeling which is accountable fora good deal of what looks like American unscrupulousness, that appear to us very instructive. When we laid down the book, it was with the feeling that we could wish there was as little of guilty responsibility in the corre- sponding phase of English vulgarity, as there appears to be in the society journalism of the United States.
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