HEARTS AND MASKS
(Grosset & Dunlap, 1905)
This book is really a collection containing two short novels, the first being the title story. The second novel, The Princess Elopes, was already published separately, but, for economical purposes, appears here as well. Although I prefer the first tale, both are excellent examples of the kind of entertainment soaked up by Americans during the mid-Edwardian era.
Hearts and Masks concerns a whimsical young man who decides, against his better judgment, to attend a masked ball at an elite hotel near Jersey City. The danger is that he may be discovered, as each of the invited guests has received a special playing card, of which only one match exists for each. Dick Comstalk takes a bold gamble and decides to use one of his own playing cards to get past the door-keeper. Unknown to him, a captivating young lady previously seen at a restaurant is also in attendance, and has pulled the same trick. Matters soon get difficult when it's found a celebrated jewel thief has infiltrated his way into the midst of the gathering, and has picked the purses of several individuals. The police order all the doors to be barred while an investigation ensues. Comstalk and the young woman, not wishing their trickery to be construed as complicity in the heist, make their retreat to the cellars, where they catch one of the real criminals escaping. From thence, it's a nonstop caper as the two try to prove their innocence, and the police scramble to nab the real crook.
This tale, while it purports to be a romantic adventure, is actually a very good example of the "Rogue school" of mystery fiction. Information on the "Rogue school" of fiction can be read at http://members.aol.com/MG4273/rogue.htm#Rogue. But meanwhile, what are the merits of this particular work? As a piece of social commentary or humanistic shim-sham, it has no value at all. In the matter of whiling away a cold winter's night and keeping the reader entertained from beginning to end, it fits the bill perfectly. MacGrath primarily saw himself as an tale-teller, and was one who could tell a story for its own sake. He followed the Alexandre Dumas school of fiction. Therefore, who can blame him if he, like his mentor, had no higher object in mind than spinning a good yarn? The proof of the pudding is always in the eating.
In the second piece, The Princess Elopes, MacGrath takes us to an imaginary duchy somewhere in central Europe, where a beautiful young princess is being coerced by her uncle to marry a neighboring prince against her will. The prince is old, fat, and dissipated; and, rather than go through the humiliation of being joined to such an one in holy matrimony, the princess decides to take off. First, she and her lady friend seek refuge in a deserted castle, where she hires a scoundrel to draw up a phony marriage certificate. When this ruse fails, she begins to employ other tactics. An interesting sub-plot involves a young medical student, Max Scharfenstein, who arrives in Barscheit (the duchy) only to become captivated by the princess's charms. The whole tale is told in the first person by Scharfenstein's friend, the American consul at Barscheit. The novel contains a very weak mystery element, though it stands on its heels as a romantic adventure. Once again MacGrath takes us back to Imperial Europe to paint a portrait similar to that we saw in his 1901 novel The Puppet Crown. The overall result is favorable. Apart from its adventurous elements, the piece contains some fine imagery which we will not readily forget. For example:
"I had taken the south highway: that
which seeks the valley beyond the
lake. The moon-film lay mistily upon everything: on the far-off lake,
on the great upheavals of stone and glacier above me, on the long white
road that stretched out before me, ribbon-wise. High up the snow on
the mountains resembled huge opals set in amethyst. I was easily
twenty-five miles from the city; that is to say, I had been in the
saddle some six hours. Nobody but a king's messenger will ride a horse
more than five miles an hour. I cast about for a place to spend the
night. There was no tavern in sight, and the hovels I had passed
during the last hour offered no shelter for my horse. Suddenly, around
a bend in the road, I saw the haven I was seeking. It was a rambling,
tottering old castle, standing in the center of a cluster of firs; and
the tiles of the roofs and the ivy of the towers were shining silver
with the heavy fall of dew."
MacGrath belongs primarily to the romantic school, and it is probably for this reason he is forgotten today. The Edwardian period, we must remember, received the overdraft of Victorian romanticism. When this book was published in 1905, the school of realism was not at all popular, nor accepted by the generality of critics and readers. Today it devolves upon us to assess the exact merits of both the romantic and realistic modes of writing. My own frank opinion is that realism is only suited for an over-industrialized society. It is one of the concomitants of a highly technological age. When you remove man from nature and the soil, you cause many of his aesthetic instincts to atrophy. The opposition to the aesthetic instincts results in what is called "realism." Romanticism, on the other hand, deals in the imaginative and spiritual faculties of man-- and it is this that makes such writing immortal. Let's face it: every person is an escapist at heart, whether he agrees or no; and man only accepts "reality" when he has no other option. A tinge of romance dwells in us all.
Nevertheless, the two works reviewed above are not so romantic that they fail to appeal to the reader's credibility. Some of the material is aged, for certain, but most of it is timeless. Thus these works are not only interesting as period pieces, but also as works of American literature. Their exact position in the field of American letters has not yet been determined. But while better men are figuring this out, my advice is that you get yourself a copy of Hearts and Masks. The illustrations by Harrison Fisher alone make this a collectible item. And early editions of the work can be got cheaply from online sources such as Ebay and Addall. Final word: if you already own a copy of this book, you may want to get an attractive facsimile dust-jacket at Lady Bluestocking's website.
--B.A.S.
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