Part 18

_Charles Dudley Warner._--Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) belongs mainly with the essayists, but wrote a few novels that deserve to live. With Mark Twain he wrote “The Gilded Age” (1873). “Their Pilgrimage” (1887) has a slight plot, but gives minute and accurate descriptions of Southern watering-places. “A Little Journey in the World” (1889) and its sequel, “The Golden House” (1895), are vivid pictures of decadent New York society. “That Fortune” (1899) is a picture, drawn from expert knowledge, of the New York financial world.

_Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen._--Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (1848-95) realised the dream of many in successfully combining the careers of authorship and teaching. Born at Frederiksvärn, Norway, and educated at Christiania, he came to America in 1869. He first became editor of a Scandinavian journal in Chicago. Then he studied philology at Leipsic for two years (1872-74). From 1874 till 1880 he was professor of German at Cornell University, and from 1881 till his death he filled a similar chair at Columbia University. Besides some poetry and essays, he wrote “Gunnar, a Norse Romance” (1874), his one effort in romance, “Tales from Two Hemispheres” (1876), “Falconberg” (1879), “Ilka on the Hilltop” (1881), a collection of short stories, “Queen Titania” (1881), “A Daughter of the Philistines” (1883), “Social Strugglers” (1893), “The Mammon of Unrighteousness” (1891), and “The Golden Calf” (1892). His later stories were realistic novels concerned with vital problems, such as the conflict between wealth and essential culture. Their vogue was not great, but their workmanship was genuine.

_Blanche Willis Howard._--Blanche Willis Howard (1847-98) was born in Bangor, Maine, was educated in New York, and in 1878 went to Stuttgart, Germany, to engage in teaching and writing. In 1890 she was married to Baron von Teuffel, a physician. She wrote a number of novels, of which “One Summer” (1875), “Aunt Serena” (1880), “Guenn” (1882), “Aulnay Tower” (1886), “The Open Door” (1889), “No Heroes” (1893), a boys’ story, and “Seven on the Highway” (1897), a collection of short stories, may be mentioned. In collaboration with William Sharp she wrote “A Fellowe and His Wife” (1892), in which a comic atmosphere prevails. Perhaps “Guenn,” the pathetic story of a Breton maiden’s hopeless love, is the book by which she will be longest remembered.

_Edgar Fawcett._--Edgar Fawcett (1847-1904) was in his day a prominent and popular poet, dramatist, and novelist. Born and reared in New York, and at twenty graduated from Columbia College, he early saw the rich possibilities of the life around him, and confined himself to the delineation of New York people. The best of his novels are “Rutherford” (written in 1876, but not published in book form till 1884), “A Hopeless Case” (1880), “A Gentleman of Leisure” (1881), “An Ambitious Woman” (1883), “The House at High Bridge” (1886), perhaps his best story, “Fair Fame” (1894), “Outrageous Fortune” (1894), and “The Ghost of Guy Thyrle” (1897). He was fond of attacking the petty conventions of social life and his satire was not ineffective. Partly because of this unpleasant realism his books have already ceased to be much read.

_Edwin Lassetter Bynner._--Edwin L. Bynner (1842-93), a New England lawyer and journalist, for a time librarian of the Boston Law Library, achieved success in the field of the historical romance. Beginning with “Nimport” (1877), he produced a large number of novels and short stories, of which the best are “Penelope’s Suitors” (_The Atlantic_, December, 1884), “Agnes Surriage” (1887), “The Begum’s Daughter” (1889), a story of New Amsterdam in 1689, and “Zachary Phips” (1892), which introduces the mysterious Western expedition of Aaron Burr. Accurate on the historical side, his works are not distinguished artistic successes; yet they make the past live again.

_Sarah Orne Jewett._--Sarah Orne Jewett (born in 1849) has written some interesting and even powerful stories of the coast of New England. She was reared at South Berwick, near the Maine coast. While accompanying her father, a physician, on his rounds, she heard from him many local and family histories and traditions. Her first story was “Deephaven” (1877); and she has since written, among others, “Country By-Ways” (1881), eight sketches; “The Mate of the _Daylight_, and Friends Ashore” (1884), short stories and sketches; “A Country Doctor” (1884), “A Marsh Island” (1885), and “A White Heron” (1886), three stories of rural New England; “Strangers and Wayfarers” (1890); “A Native of Winby, and Other Tales” (1893); “The Country of the Pointed Firs” (1896), which contains her most successful character studies; “The Queen’s Twin, and Other Stories” (1899); “The Tory Lover” (1901), a love-story of the Revolution, introducing John Paul Jones, which cannot be pronounced successful. Miss Jewett is at her best in her kindly humorous and sympathetic interpretations of humble but self-respecting New Englanders of the present day. Her humour is healthy and contagious and her style is for the most part simple, clear, and vigorous.

_Mrs. Ellen Olney Kirk._--Ellen Olney Kirk (“Henry Hayes,” born in Connecticut in 1842) has been popular as a novelist. She received her education at Stratford, Conn., and was married to John Foster Kirk, the historian, in 1879. Her stories include “Love in Idleness” (1877), “A Lesson in Love” (1883), a study in character, “A Midsummer Madness” (1885), “The Story of Margaret Kent” (1886), “Queen Money” (1888), “The Story of Lawrence Garth” (1894), her best book, in which the difficult character of an adventuress is well drawn, “The Revolt of a Daughter” (1898), “Dorothy Deane” (1899), “Our Lady Vanity” (1901), “The Apology of Ayliffe” (1904), and “Marcia” (1907). The moral in her stories is generally not obtrusive and the humour is genial.

_Edward Bellamy._--Edward Bellamy (1850-98), a native of Massachusetts, studied at Union College and in Germany, and in 1871 was admitted to the bar, but devoted his life to journalism and literature. After a year in the Sandwich Islands, in 1878 he published his first novel, “A Nantucket Idyl,” which was followed by “Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process” (1880), in its own way a supremely effective romance, and “Miss Ludington’s Sister, a Romance of Immortality” (1884), none of them very successful with the public. His best known work, “Looking Backward, or 2000-1887” (1888), a Utopian romance, was unexpectedly received as a gospel of socialism; it was widely read and translated into many languages. Much inferior artistically was its sequel, “Equality” (1897). In his best work Bellamy showed a rare gift of romantic portraiture of average types “in the village environment by which he interpreted the heart of the American nation.”

_Mrs. Burton N. Harrison._--Mrs. Burton Harrison (born Constance Cary, at Vaucluse, Virginia, in 1846) has written interesting and highly realistic novels of New York City life, full of local colour and effective in background; and some novels of Virginia life. Mr. Harrison, to whom she was married in 1867, had been private secretary to President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. The couple soon removed to New York, which has since been their permanent home. Mrs. Harrison’s first venture in literature was “A Little Centennial Lady” (_Scribner’s Monthly_, July, 1876), a sprightly historical sketch. Her novels dealing with Northern society are “Golden Rod” (1878), “Helen Troy” (1881), “The Anglomaniacs” (1890), “Sweet Bells out of Tune” (1893), “A Bachelor Maid” (1894), “An Errant Wooing” (1895), “Good Americans” (1897), “A Triple Entanglement” (1897), “The Carcelline Emerald” (1899), and “The Circle of a Century.” Perhaps the chief excellence of these stories is the dialogue, in the management of which Mrs. Harrison shows great skill. Although the attitude of the author is that of a satirist, her laughter at the foibles of society is not unkindly. Of Virginia she has written “Crow’s Nest and Bellhaven Tales” (1892) and “A Son of the Old Dominion” (1897), which deals with pre-Revolutionary times. “A Daughter of the South” (1892) is an exquisitely told story of New Orleans Creole life thrown into the environment of Paris under the Second Empire.

_Charles Egbert Craddock._--Charles Egbert Craddock is the pen name of Mary Noailles Murfree (born in 1850), who contributed to _The Atlantic_ for several years before it was suspected that her stories were written by a woman. She is the daughter of a once prominent lawyer of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who in 1883 removed to St. Louis. Because of an accident, Miss Murfree was for several years unable to walk. She was a diligent student and somehow gained an intimate knowledge of the mountaineers of Eastern Tennessee, who figure in all of her stories. Her first story of any importance was “The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove” (_The Atlantic_, May, 1878). It was largely due to Mr. Aldrich’s urgent representations that her first collection of stories, “In the Tennessee Mountains,” found a publisher (1884). Of this a writer in _The Nation_ said, with justice: “We have not only one mountain valley, but a whole country of hills--not a man and a woman here and there, but the people of a whole district--not merely a day of winter or of summer, but all the year--not lives, but life.” This is substantially true of all her works, in which she described prosaic and pathetic mountaineer life, being always inspired, however, by the solitude and grandeur of the Great Smoky Mountains. The list of her works is a long one: “Where the Battle was Fought” (1884); “Down the Ravine” (1885); “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains” (1885), which recounts the history of “a Bunyan worsted by his doubts”; “In the Clouds” (1887), a tragic story likewise dealing with religious experiences; “The Story of Keedon Bluffs” (1887); “The Despot of Broomsedge Cove” (1889), the plot of which hinges on a mysterious murder; “In the Stranger People’s Country” (1891); “His Vanished Star” (1894); “The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories” (1895); “The Juggler” (1897); “The Young Mountaineers” (1897), short stories; “The Champion” (1902); “A Spectre of Power” (1903), which is laid in the year 1763 and is full of Indian love; “The Frontiersmen” (1904); and “The Storm Centre” (1905). Her later work suffers from repetition of certain mannerisms and from excessive attention to description; possibly also from too rapid production. On the whole, however, in her ability to present the pathos and tragedy of simple lives, Miss Murfree has a place of honour among present-day writers.

_Anna Katharine Green._--Through the publication, in 1878, of “The Leavenworth Case,” a clever detective story, this author, then a girl of nineteen, was brought into immediate notice on both sides of the Atlantic. “The Leavenworth Case” was followed in successive years by “A Strange Disappearance,” “The Sword of Damocles,” “Hand and Ring,” “Behind Closed Doors,” “Marked ‘Personal,’” “That Affair Next Door,” “Lost Man’s Lane,” “One of My Sons,” and other volumes. Some critics have spoken of Miss Green (who is now Mrs. Charles Rohlfs) as the “Wilkie Collins of America.” Nearly all of her books have appeared in transatlantic editions. Mrs. Rohlfs is also responsible for two volumes of poems, “The Defence of the Bride” (1882) and “Risifi’s Daughter” (1886).

_Frank R. Stockton._--The unique and kindly humour of Mr. Stockton’s books attracted many readers. He was born in Philadelphia in 1834 and was the son of William S. Stockton, an ardent temperance reformer, abolitionist, and Methodist layman who helped to establish the Methodist Protestant Church. Educated in the schools of Philadelphia, young Stockton first tried the study of medicine, then worked as a wood-engraver for some years, devoting his leisure time to prose and verse writing. In 1872, he gave up wood-engraving to join the staff of the Philadelphia _Morning Post_, and for the next ten years was engaged in editorial and journalistic work on _Scribner’s Monthly_, _St. Nicholas_, _Hearth and Home_, etc. From 1882 until his death in 1902, Mr. Stockton was independently engaged in literary work, producing a large number of delightfully humorous stories and novels. The tale which made him famous was “Rudder Grange” (1879), which recounts the experiences of a young married couple who begin housekeeping in a castaway barge with an absurd handmaid named Pomona. “The Lady or the Tiger? and Other Stories” appeared in 1884; the title story is the best known of Stockton’s works. Other stories are “The Late Mrs. Null” (1886); “The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine” (1886), a Crusoe-like narrative, a sequel to which is “The Dusantes” (1888); “The Hundredth Man” (1887); “The Merry Chanter” (1890); “The Squirrel Inn” (1891); “Pomona’s Travels” (1894), which narrates the wedding journey of the amusing Pomona through England and Scotland; “The Adventures of Captain Horn” (1895) and its sequel, “Mrs. Cliff’s Yacht” (1896), which deal with adventures in quest of the treasure of the Incas of Peru; “A Bicycle of Cathay” (1900); and “Afield and Afloat” (1901), a collection of short stories. While his style is remarkably simple and free from mannerisms, “the art that conceals art, until it can pass for nature itself,” his method of handling plot and character is distinctively his own. His reasoning is always logical, but he contrives that it shall bring about the most amusing absurdities conceivable. If, as one writer alleges, “his whimsicality played on the surface of men and things,” one may reply that that is precisely where it should play. His stories are none the less wholesome, even though he rarely or never touches on the pathetic. He was equally at home with the novel and the short story; but probably it is by his short stories that he will be longest known.

_George Washington Cable._--George W. Cable (born in 1844) has immortalised the picturesque Creole life of Louisiana in the nineteenth century. Born in New Orleans of Virginian and New England stock, he had little school training and early became a clerk. At nineteen he entered the Confederate Army, serving till the close of the war. Then he became in succession a civil engineer and an accountant, contributing meanwhile to the New Orleans _Picayune_. Seven of his stories were collected and published in 1879 as “Old Creole Days.” “The Grandissimes” (1880), which remains his best work, is a graphic and faithful picture of New Orleans life of a century ago, embodying romance and realism. “Madame Delphine” (1881) is a touching story of a heroic old quadroon woman. In “Dr. Sevier” (1884), Cable has studied in romantic vein an exceptional type of character, though not with marked success. “Bonaventure, a Prose Pastoral of Arcadian Louisiana” (1888), a better book, is a chapter of ethical history. “Strange True Stories of Louisiana” appeared in 1889. Less interesting as fiction, but valuable as a social study, is “John March, Southerner” (1894), a story of Southern Reconstruction. “The Cavalier” (1901) goes back to the Civil War, but subordinates interest in the conflict to interest in character; while “Bylow Hill” (1902) is a tragic story of insane jealousy, the scene being New England. Since 1885, Mr. Cable has lived at Northampton, Massachusetts. His later work, like that of many another, has probably suffered from a natural tendency to subordinate the artistic to the ethical. But in the province which he has made his own, the pioneer remains supreme. “Few recent American novelists,” Professor Richardson justly remarks, “have shown so uniform an average of attainment in thought and art, or have thrown upon the quaintly real such new tints of ideal light.”

_Albion Winegar Tourgee._--Albion W. Tourgee (1838-1905), an Ohioan, studied (1858-61) at the University of Rochester, saw service in the Union Army, and afterward became an editor and lawyer at Greensboro, North Carolina. Most of his novels deal with phases of the Reconstruction Period in the South. The best of these were: “A Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools” (1879), doubtless his best known work, “Bricks Without Straw” (1880), and “The Invisible Empire” (1883). “Figs and Thistles” (1879) is a realistic story of early Ohio, in which the career of President Garfield is introduced; “Pactolus Prime” (1890) is the story of a Washington bootblack who has views on the negro problem. A man of strong opinions, Judge Tourgee could not write a novel which did not provoke thought; and he was by no means devoid of the true story-teller’s cunning.

=The Eighties.=--The decade of 1880-90 beheld the growth of realism to vigorous maturity. Romances not a few were written, to be sure, such as the “Ramona” (1884) of Mrs. Helen Fiske Jackson (“H. H.,” 1831-85), in which a romantic narrative clothes a strong plea for more humane treatment of the Indians, and the two Italian romances of William Waldorf Astor (born in 1848), “Valentino” (1885) and “Sforza, a Story of Milan” (1889). But these can hardly be called representative stories in a decade which saw the best work of Howells, James, Craddock, Fawcett, Bunner, Cable, and many others who wrote of the life they had seen and were content to employ present-day settings.

A few writers may here be grouped together for convenience. To the decade in question belong the best stories of George Parsons Lathrop (1851-98), the son-in-law of Hawthorne: “In the Distance” (1882), “An Echo of Passion” (1882), and “Would You Kill Him?” (1889), which amounts to a plea against capital punishment; and most of the fiction of Professor Arlo Bates (born in 1850): “The Pagans” (1884) and its sequel “The Philistines” (1889), “A Lad’s Love” (1887), though “The Puritans” dates from 1898. Fine pictures of Italian life have been drawn by Julia Constance Fletcher (“George Fleming,” born in 1853) in “Vestigia” (1882) and “Andromeda” (1885), the latter a story of high ideals and noble self-sacrifice. Illinois life in the unattractive baldness of pioneer days is portrayed by Major Joseph Kirkland (1830-94) in “Zury, the Meanest Man in Spring County” (1887) and “The McVeys, an Episode” (1888), in which Lincoln again figures as in Eggleston’s “Graysons.”

_Henry Adams and John Hay._--“Democracy” (1880), an anonymous novel the authorship of which has hitherto baffled the critics, and which the present writer can now announce definitely to have been the work of the historian Henry Adams, is a keen and incisive study of political society in Washington, vividly portraying the corruption which perhaps inevitably attends the growth of the people’s power, but concerning which the author is all too pessimistic. The bribery case which aids Mrs. Lee in unmasking the real character of Silas P. Ratcliffe finds a parallel in our contemporary history; and several of the characters are thought to have been drawn from real life. Happily, whatever may have been the state of affairs in Washington in 1880, the story would be very far from a true picture of the Washington of to-day. John Hay (1838-1905), lawyer, journalist, diplomatist, and statesman, was the author of a single novel, and his connection with that has been, up to the appearance of the present volume, only a conjecture. Prudence, however, obviously, required that “The Bread-Winners” (1883) should appear anonymously. As a politician, and as acting editor of _The Tribune_, Mr. Hay did not then wish to avow himself the author of a “frivolous novel”; besides, in the story he had spoken rather plainly about strikes and labour troubles. The story itself is well written, natural, and for the most part true to life. Of the two love scenes, the proposal of Maud Matchin is more convincing than is Farnham’s to Alice Belding. The plot is well worked out; our interest in the story for itself almost never flags.

_Joel Chandler Harris._--Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) used to describe himself as a journalist who became a literary man by accident. Few accidents have been luckier. He was born at Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia. At fourteen he began to set type in a country newspaper office, contributing surreptitiously to its columns, setting his articles from the case instead of committing them to paper. Then he studied law and practised for a time at Forsyth, Georgia, at the same time doing literary work. In 1876, he joined the staff of the Atlanta _Constitution_, of which he became editor in 1890. To this paper he contributed the beast stories collected in 1881 under the title of “Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings,” which have ever since been immensely popular. Uncle Remus, a shrewd and witty old negro, has an inexhaustible supply of stories of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the other creatures; these “the little boy” and the rest of us never tire of hearing. The stories themselves, brought from Africa by the negroes, are interesting variant forms of the great beast epic, the classic example of which is “Reynard the Fox.”[18] They celebrate the victory of craft over strength, of brain over brawn. Two other series afterward appeared, “Nights with Uncle Remus” (1883) and “Uncle Remus and His Friends” (1892); and now there is an _Uncle Remus’ Magazine_. Mr. Harris’ other books have helped to complete an admirably faithful picture of Middle Georgia rural life before, during, and after the Civil War. They include “At Teague Poteet’s” (published in 1883 in _The Century_), “Mingo, and Other Sketches in Black and White” (1884), “Free Joe” (1887), “Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches and Stories” (1891), in which melancholy and pathos predominate, “Aaron in the Wildwoods” (1897), “Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War” (1898), “The Chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann” (1899), “On the Wing of Occasions” (1900). With the single exception of “Gabriel Tolliver” (1902), which was not successful, Mr. Harris’ constant work in journalism prevented him from undertaking any long novel of plantation life; shorter flights were better suited to his ability.

_Maurice Thompson._--Maurice Thompson (1844-1901), of Indiana, wrote several romances. The first three, dealing with Southern life, “A Tallahassee Girl” (1882), “His Second Campaign” (1883), and “At Love’s Extremes” (1885), were not very successful. In “A Banker of Bankersville” (1886) he succeeded better, giving a true and fresh picture of life in Indiana. The novel by which he is best known is “Alice of Old Vincennes” (1901), a stirring tale of French Indiana and the War of Independence. “Sweetheart Manette” (1901) gives an agreeable sketch of life in a Creole town on the Gulf Coast.