Tales of Mean Streets

s from the high washings and roarings of the eighteen-nineties. The decade — the last of the Victorian age, as of the century — was so fecund that som

Bernard Shaw, “Sherlock Holmes,” the matriculation pieces of H.G. Wells, Jerome K. Jerome, Hewlett, “Dodo” Benson, Hichens and so on, and all the best of Gissing and Wilde. Think of the novelties of one year only, 1894: “The

en the stock companies in the oil towns set any store by it. So with “The Green Carnation,” “Round the Red Lamp,” the “Dolly Dialogues,” and even “Arms and the Man,” and, I am almost tempted to add, the “Jungle Book.” But “Tales of Mean Streets” is still on its legs. P

e London East End, the sewer of England and of Christendom. Morrison, in brief, brought on a whole new company of comedians and set them to playing novel pieces, tragedy and farce. He made them, in his light tales, more real than any solemn Blue Book or polemic had ever made them, and by a great deal; he not only created plausible characters, but li

es too, but that was surely not its dominant note. On the contrary, it was rather romantic, ameliorative, sweet-singing; its high god was Kipling, the sentimental optimist. The Empire was flourishing; the British public was in good humor; life seemed a lovely thing. In the midst of all this the

ch better effect. The note seems likely to be a permanent one in our fiction. Now and then it appears to die out, but not for long. A year ago I thought it was doing so — an

Men

1918.