The Mentor: Makers of American Fiction, Vol. 6, Num. 14, Serial No. 162, September 1, 1918

Fiction Notes in Varied Keys

If one novel can make a novelist, Ernest Poole earned the right to be considered one of the makers of modern American fiction when he wrote “The Harbor” (1915). Although the end of the story was somewhat marred by over-insistence on sociological problems, in the first part of the book the author struck a reminiscent note as charming as that struck by Du Maurier in “Peter Ibbetson.” No one had paid much attention to Mr. Poole’s earlier novel, “A Man’s Friends,” but in the general recognition of “The Harbor,” as a work of far more than ephemeral significance, there was hardly a dissenting voice. Not so widely popular, but marked by the same high quality of workmanship, is Mr. Poole’s later book, “His Family.”

Of the same generation at Princeton as Ernest Poole was Stephen French Whitman, and as mention of Mr. Poole’s name inevitably suggests “The Harbor,” so the name of Mr. Whitman calls up at once memories of “Predestined.” Unlike “The Harbor,” “Predestined” was not, speaking materially, a success. It was too grim, its ending was too pitiless. But very few who read the story of the degeneration of Felix Piers were able soon to forget it. In such later stories as “The Isle of Life” and “Children of Hope,” Mr. Whitman has forsaken New York for Italy and Sicily.

It is now almost twenty years since Henry Kitchell Webster and Samuel Merwin began their writing careers in collaboration. Together they wrote “The Short Line War” (1899), “Calumet K” and “Comrade John.” All these were well-told tales, and the later years, when each man has been working alone, have shown that neither one carried an undue share of the burden. Mr. Webster’s books include “The Whispering Man,” “A King in Khaki,” “The Ghost Girl,” “The Butterfly” and “The Real Adventure.” Mr. Merwin’s work has been unusual in the variety of its themes. Washington and the Constitution of the United States were ingredients of “The Citadel.” The adventures of an American girl in China were narrated in “The Charmed Life of Miss Austen.” Musical theories, the segregated district of Yokohama, and incidents in Chinese hotels went to the making of “Anthony the Absolute.” “The Honey Bee” is the story of a woman whose life has been in an American department store, who makes a trip to Paris, and there falls in love with one Blink Moran, of the prize-ring.