Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/166



MONG the impressive happenings which are called events and which "make conversation"—as the outlet for a fine excitement—and arouse tense expectation, perhaps none is so mentally piquant as the beginning of a new serial story by that particular novelist who at the time most readily commands the polite audience of the English-speaking world. Many of the readers of this Magazine remember the kind and depth of feeling awakened by the appearance in its pages of the opening chapters of Dickens's Little Dorrit, of Thackeray's Adventures of Philip, and of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. Our audience awaiting such things now is much keener, more deeply cultivated, and a very much larger one in America, besides including the polite reading public of England, so that these exciting Magazine events have come to be of international importance.

Other events whose initiation invites public celebration—such as great expositions and the visits of princes—promise no surprising sequel in their continuance. The prince has arrived, and when we have once seen him such curiosity as we may have had is satisfied; we know pretty well all else that will happen in the festive proceeding—the parades and dinners and speeches. But a new novel by a great writer—what charms are hidden in the far reaches of this dark forest of romance? What forms of manhood and womanhood will flash upon our vision and dwell in our regard—so much more interesting than fabled nymphs or fairies because they are real and human! We search the tantalizing caption and try to divine all the possibilities intimated; we eagerly devour the first instalment, in which we are likely to be introduced to the heroine and hero; and since their future is, for the present, left to our dreams, we dream. A year of travel, wherever we might go, could unfold no such mystery: and here we have no Baedeker to forecast our course.

It is this element of mystery which gives a great serial novel its irresistible hold upon the reader—which, indeed, makes serial publication possible. In a year it will be at every reader's command in book form. Why not wait? Some readers will, but not those who have felt the writer's power and charm.

In the Study, where the editor meets the readers of the Magazine on somewhat homely and familiar terms, he could not without affectation be silent about a thing of such moment as the beginning of Mrs. Humphry Ward's new novel, "The Marriage of William Ashe." He is addressing an audience which has undoubtedly already read the first two chapters of this novel, and the air about him seems vibrant with celebrant enthusiasm, to which he cannot fail to respond. If he could have had the first word, could have heralded prelusively the note of the play before the curtain was lifted and the note already sounded, there would have been much that he could say, but now his readers are saying it for him, and his utterance must seem an echo. They have seen Lady Kitty enter, and they ask the editor if, though so different from Julie Le Breton, she is not just as appealing and even more suggestive of lively possibilities in the succeeding acts; and the young hero, in his as yet loosely fitting diplomatic habit, more open to the beauty and charm of the world than to ambition for the mastery of its affairs—"how youthful, how interesting!" And "how delightful that all the elements for a fascinating love-story are brought together in this first view!" The editor hears all this, and the expression of the readers' pleasure that, as in "Lady Rose's Daughter," they are to have glimpses of high social life in England, blended with reminiscences, at least, of tempting, fateful Paris, and, perchance, enchanting views of the author's beloved Italy, and he echoes their plaudits and their hopes.

The editor knows something more of the story than the readers do, but that, of course, he may not tell, and they would have it told only in the author's own way. He can only give them his confident assurance that their highest expectations will be fully met. As to the