The House of Lynch

Leonard Merrick (1864 – 1939) was an English novelist. Although largely forgotten today, he was widely admired by his peers, J. M. Barrie called Merrick the "novelist's novelist."
* * * *An excerpt from the Introduction by G. K. Chesterton.
... The House of Lynch deals with tyranny and deliverance from tyranny; and though that tyranny sprang up in a more sordid environment, it has spread itself with something of the same cosmopolitan power. The House of Lynch is the story of a spirited and self-respecting artist, who refused to profit by the polluted wealth of a base and blatant American millionaire. He insists on marrying the daughter of the millionaire as if she were the daughter of a pauper; and the rest of the story records his own struggle to avoid pauperism and maintain principle. It is here that the graver and more realistic method of Mr. Merrick is appropriately developed. He does not fail to state the real problems that often change and chill the fiery simplicity of such a challenge; especially that double altruism and division of duties which appears in the presence of the child; and which may have something to do with the tradition which encouraged enthusiasts to be celibates. He never glosses over the fact that such a challenge is desperately hard to maintain; but he never leaves on the reader's mind the least doubt of his conviction that it is worth maintaining. The perilous but quite positive poise or balance is very dexterously suggested in the temporary surrender of one of the partners in the adventure, who repents of her virtue and then repents of her evil repentance. There is never any reason to lose sight of the original root of the trouble, the modern tyranny of gold and especially of ill-gotten gold. It would be unreasonable to expect even an American millionaire to have a thousand sons-in-law; but he may well have a thousand dependents; and the modern moral problem undoubtedly is that of turning all those dependents into independents. For such fortunes are in reality exactly what they are here in romance; shameful drugs poisoning private honour, and permanent pestilences threatening public health. Excuses are made for them in politics and the press, the same excuses which the stunted and half-witted soul of the little plutocrat makes for them in this story. But the very excuses offered are enough to prove the whole situation to be inexcusable. They have a flat and fourth-rate character which has hardly ever before belonged to the ruling minds of a human society. Ours is perhaps the first generation of men which has allowed itself to be ruled, not merely by men who might have undignified characters, but by men who must have undignified aims. The mere millionaire has already proved his inferior intelligence by seeking what he pretends to have proved his superior intelligence by finding. Military courage or tribal loyalty may be rudimentary and barbaric virtues, but they were virtues; it has been left for our own time to allow men to rise to national and international power wholly and solely by their vices, and these only the meaner vices. Hence it follows that a plutocracy, unlike an aristocracy, has not any sad or even sulky legend surrounding its decay and death; for all men feel in their hearts that its death would not be in the least sad. The fall of the The House of Lynch would be surrounded by no such tragic portents as the fall of the House of Usher; for we should all feel that it would not be a tragic, but rather an agreeably comic incident. It would only be a business going "bust"; and as bad a business as there has ever been in this world.