If the human beings in Dr. Weir Mitchell's very interesting novelof "Circumstance" do not seem so human as those Russians of Gorkyand those Kansans of Mr. White, it is because people in societyare always human with difficulty, and his Philadelphians aremostly in society.They are almost reproachfully exemplary, insome instances; and it is when they give way to the natural man,and especially the natural woman, that they are consoling andedifying.When Mary Fairthorne begins to scold her cousin, KittyMorrow, at the party where she finds Kitty wearing her deadmother's pearls, and even takes hold of her in a way that makesthe reader hope she is going to shake her, she is delightful; andwhen Kitty complains that Mary has "pinched" her, she isadorable.One is really in love with her for the moment; and inthat moment of nature the thick air of good society seems to blowaway and let one breathe freely.The bad people in the book arebetter than the good people, and the good people are best intheir worst tempers.They are so exclusively well born and wellbred that the fitness of the medical student, Blount, for theirsociety can be ascertained only by his reference to a New Englandancestry of the high antiquity that can excuse even dubious cuffsand finger-nails in a descendant of good principles and generousinstincts.
The psychological problem studied in the book with such artisticfineness and scientific thoroughness is personally a certain Mrs.
Hunter, who manages through the weak-minded and selfish KittyMorrow to work her way to authority in the household of Kitty'suncle, where she displaces Mary Fairthorne, and makes the placeodious to all the kith and kin of Kitty.Intellectually, she isa clever woman, or rather, she is a woman of great cunning thatrises at times to sagacity; but she is limited by a bad heart andan absence of conscience.She is bold up to a point, and thenshe is timid; she will go to lengths, but not to all lengths; andwhen it comes to poisoning Fairthorne to keep him from changinghis mind about the bequest he has made her, she has not quite thecourage of her convictions.She hesitates and does not do it,and it is in this point she becomes so aesthetically successful.
The guilt of the uncommitted crimes is more important than theguilt of those which have been committed; and the author does agood thing morally as well as artistically in leaving Mrs. Hunterstill something of a problem to his reader.In most things sheis almost too plain a case; she is sly, and vulgar, and depravedand cruel; she is all that a murderess should be; but, inhesitating at murder, she becomes and remains a mystery, and thereader does not get rid of her as he would if she had really donethe deed.In the inferior exigencies she strikes fearlessly; andwhen the man who has divorced her looms up in her horizon withdoom in his presence, she goes and makes love to him.She is notthe less successful because she disgusts him; he agrees to lether alone so long as she does no mischief; she has, at least,made him unwilling to feel himself her persecutor, and that isenough for her.
Mrs. Hunter is a study of extreme interest in degeneracy, but Iam not sure that Kitty Morrow is not a rarer contribution toknowledge.Of course, that sort of selfish girl has always beenknown, but she has not met the open recognition which constitutesknowledge, and so she has the preciousness of a find.She is atonce tiresome and vivacious; she is cold-hearted but notcold-blooded, and when she lets herself go in an outburst ofpassion for the celibate young ritualist, Knellwood, she becomesfascinating.She does not let herself go without having assuredherself that he loves her, and somehow one is not shocked at hermaking love to him; one even wishes that she had won him.I amnot sure but the case would have been a little truer if she hadwon him, but as it is I am richly content with it.Perhaps I amthe more content because in the case of Kitty Morrow I find aconcession to reality more entire than the case of Mrs. Hunter.
She is of the heredity from which you would expect her depravity;but Kitty Morrow, who lets herself go so recklessly, is, for allone knows, as well born and as well bred as those otherPhiladelphians.In my admiration of her, as a work of art,however, I must not fail of justice to the higher beauty of MaryFairthorne's character.She is really a good girl, and savedfrom the unreality which always threatens goodness in fiction bythose limitations of temper which I have already hinted.
