Text: Anonymous, “Short Stories After Poe and Hawthorne,” Pall Mall Gazette (London, England), vol. XLIV, whole no. 6721, September 30, 1886, p. 4, col. 2

[page 4, column 2, continued:]

SHORT STORIES AFTER POE AND HAWTHORNE.*

MR. BRANDER MATTHEWS has a knack of his own in story-telling — none the less his own because it is compounded from the methods of several other people. He is evidently a student of the Old Masters of American literature, who were great masters in their way; we mean, of course, Hawthorne and Poe. The facile Bret-Harteism which has of late years overrun American story-telling has no charms for Mr. Matthews. He makes no attempt to emulate the super-subtlety of Mr. James or the clairvoyance of Mr. Howells. His art of fiction is a purely intellectual process, and appeals to the intellect alone, or through the intellect to the spinal marrow; for Mr. Matthews, with much of Poe's ingenuity, has a touch, too, of Poe's gruesomeness. The ingenuity is seen at its best in the story called “Perchance to Dream,” a little masterpiece of its kind. In “A Secret of the Sea,” which gives the present collection its title, the process of construction is a little too obvious. The author has not quite cleared away his scaffolding before throwing open the edifice to the public; but it is nevertheless a very clever piece of construction. “Love at First Sight” is a quaint fantasy, but we are disposed to endorse the criticism of Miss Phyllis Van Rensselaer and object that “the Queen of the Living Chessmen” is unnecessarily passive. Once fairly launched in romance, we are prepared for, and even demand, the most romantic developments possible; and the logic of the situation seems to require that the Queen herself should in some way suggest to the Doctor the decisive move by which the Rajah is checkmated. “Brief — as Woman's Love” is a powerful story, the conclusion of which is perhaps all the more striking because the opening smacks of the commonplace. Despite some clever writing which they contain, “Perturbed Spirits” and “Esther Feverel” can be regarded only as padding. The former in particular is like a Christmas story of the old Dickens school, and is out of place in a collection so distinctively modern. The aforesaid gruesomeness of Poe is successfully reproduced in the “The Elixir of Death,” which might have had for its second title “A Study in Morbid Toxicology.” The one thing wanting to give the tale its due verisimilitude is some indication of the method by which the mad toxicologist imagines that he can administer his elixir “at any time, at any distance, despite any and all precautions.” An unimportant sketch called “Waiting” closes a collection which is stamped throughout by a certain imaginative individuality, and is far above the level of ordinary magazine story-telling. The setting of New York social life in which Mr. Matthews contrives to place most of his tales is pleasant enough but tends to become monotonous.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 4, column 2:]

*“A Secret of the Sea,” &c. By Brander Matthews. (London: Chatto and Windus. 1886.)