Henry Van Dyke’s preface to The Ruling Passion declares that “in every life worth writing about there is a ruling passion,” and he sets out to explore passions beyond romantic love—music, nature, children, honour, strife, revenge, money, pride, friendship, loyalty, duty. The stories that follow, set in rugged coastal and wilderness landscapes, test these passions against harsh natural forces. The excerpt from one tale follows Dan Scott and his dog Pichou through a treacherous boat journey along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the man’s growing bond with the animal is set against “Nature, with her teeth bare and her lips scarred.” Van Dyke’s prose is precise and sensory, grounding abstract passions in concrete, physical detail.

The Preface as a Writer’s Manifesto

The book opens with a verse prayer, “A Writer’s Request of His Master,” asking for honesty with words and people, and for an ideal that “will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on the loom of the real.” This is not mere piety; it signals Van Dyke’s method. He insists that a story must have meaning but never tag a moral overtly. The preface then argues that while romantic love is a universal theme, it is often the other passions that give a life its “distinctive hue.” He writes that when circumstances cross the ruling passion, “then things happen, characters emerge, slight events are significant, mere adventures are transformed into a real plot.” This is a direct statement of craft: plot arises from the friction between inner desire and outer obstacle.

Landscape as an Active Force

In the excerpt, the setting is not backdrop but antagonist. The chaloupe passes “the fire-swept cliffs of Riviere-au-Tonnerre,” “the turbulent, rocky shores of the Sheldrake,” and “the long, desolate ridges of Cap Cormorant.” The catalogue of place names and geological features—ice-worn granite, submerged mountains, tusks of granite—creates a world that resists human passage. Van Dyke personifies nature as having “teeth bare and her lips scarred.” The journey is a physical test, but also a moral one: Dan Scott’s care for Pichou, the dog who “looked up in the man’s face as if he had found his God,” suggests that the ruling passion here may be loyalty or companionship, emerging under duress. The landscape forces the characters to reveal what they truly value.

The Dog as a Mirror of Human Nature

Pichou, a dog who has “never been treated like a gentleman,” responds to kindness with quiet steadiness. Van Dyke uses the animal to reflect the man’s inner state: “the man, looking down into the eye that was not disfigured by the black patch, saw something that he had been seeking for a long time.” The dog’s trust becomes a catalyst for Dan Scott’s own emotional discovery. This is a recurring pattern in the collection—passions are revealed through relationships with the non-human world. The excerpt ends with the two sleeping side by side, their “friendship sealed.” But the story is not finished; the next day brings a squall, a jibing sail, and Dan Scott overboard. The ruling passion will be tested further.

Readers approaching The Ruling Passion should attend to the interplay between Van Dyke’s stated intentions in the preface and the actual texture of the stories. The catalog classifies this as science fiction and utopias, but the excerpts show no speculative elements; instead, they offer realistic, nature-infused drama. The book rewards those who read for the precise rendering of landscape and the quiet emergence of character through action rather than declaration.