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What is new in Hergesheimer's book is merely the environment in which his characters so disastrously move and an insight into the mechanism of their psychology which earlier writers lacked. I have called it a story of the age of no innocence, but that would be the author's term, not mine; for indeed his characters seem to display as naive an innocence as Mrs.
And this is one way of describing Mr. Hergesheimer's study of love in idleness in the 1920's. Another way would be to call it an essay upon insecurity, although the word essay is too dry to use in a story which is fairly awash with alcohol. The war, the story seems to say, sapped our security of property and comfort and life.
One comes tolerably close to the secret of Mr. Hergesheimer's career by perceiving that, with an admirable style of which he is both conscious and very properly proud, he has looked luxuriously through the world for subjects which his style will fit. Particularly has he emancipated himself from bondage to nook and corner.
Hergesheimer's art is more nearly adequate than in the other stories, but they lack the authoritative presentation which made "The Three Black Pennys" a landmark in contemporary American fiction. They show the author to be a too frank disciple of Mr. Galsworthy in the less essential aspect of the latter's art, and their tone is too neutral to be altogether convincing.
These twelve portraits by the Turner of corruption have a severe logic of their own which may pass for being classical. As diploma pieces they are incomparable, but as renderings of life they carry no sense of conviction. Mr. Hergesheimer's introduction is a more or less unsuccessful special plea.
To resist for a woman was to become "blasted and twisted out of her purpose," to be "steeped in vinegar or filled with tallow"; to resist for a man was to lose the integrity of his personality. There were no moral compensations, for there is no morality but self-development, at least in Mr. Hergesheimer's town of Eastlake. There is no god for a man in love but Cytherea.
Meta carries the decorative traits of Mr. Hergesheimer's women to the point at which they suggest the marionette too much; by his methods, of course, he habitually runs the risk of leaving the flesh and blood out of his women.
Toward this encouragement the public may contribute in their measure, as I understand that the royalties which accrue from the sale of this volume are to be applied to additional prizes in future years. Mr. Hergesheimer's new collection of seven stories is largely drawn from the files of The Saturday Evening Post, and represents to some degree a compromise with his public.
And this is the more notable for the reason that the characters in each of them stand against the background of a highly technical profession that of iron-making through three generations, that of shipping under sail to all the quarters of the earth. The wharves of Mr. Hergesheimer's Salem, the furnaces of his Myrtle Forge, are thick with accurate, pungent, delightful facts.
His second book depends largely upon the craving for sex experience, in which it resembles Mr. Hergesheimer's "Cytherea," but also plays heavily upon the motive of escape, and upon sheer curiosity. "Miss Lulu Bett" was a story of revenge.
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