Part 20

_Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood._--Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847-1902) made a name for herself with some very successful historical romances of the French and Indian Wars and French Canadian and early Illinois life. “The Romance of Dollard” (1889), “The Lady of Fort St. John” (1891), “The White Islander” (1893), and “The Chase of Saint Castin, and Other Stories” (1894) are spirited narratives of battle and siege, of intrigue and jealousy, in which bold and noble characters play their parts well, and which contain vivid descriptions of scenery--in sunshine and storm. Of the early Middle West she wrote “Old Kaskaskia” (1893), “The Spirit of an Illinois Town” (1897), “Little Renault” (1897), “Spanish Peggy” (1899), “The Queen of the Swamp, and Other Plain Americans” (1899), and “Lazarre” (1901).

_Rowland E. Robinson._--The dialect and manners of Vermont are reproduced with remarkable fidelity by Rowland E. Robinson (1833-1900) in “Sam Lovel’s Camps” (1889), “Danvis Folks” (1894), and “Uncle ’Lisha’s Shop” (1897). These stories are among our most valuable transcripts of the life of Northern New England.

_Francis Hopkinson Smith._--F. Hopkinson Smith (born in Baltimore, 1838) had a varied career before he essayed the novel, at fifty-three. He began life as a clerk in some iron works; then, becoming an engineer and contractor, he took to building sea-walls and lighthouses, and afterwards became well known as an artist. In “Colonel Carter of Cartersville” (1891) he drew an alluring picture of the old _régime_ in the South. “A Gentleman Vagabond, and Some Others” (1895) are varied character stories. “Tom Grogan” (1896) and “Caleb West, Master Diver” (1898) draw upon Mr. Smith’s engineering experiences. He has also written “The Other Fellow” (1899), “The Fortunes of Oliver Horn” (1902), “The Under Dog” (1903), “Colonel Carter’s Christmas” (1904), “At Close Range” (1905), and “The Wood Fire in No. 3” (1905). If some of his persons are conventional and indistinct, others stand out as skilfully characterised and permanent figures in his literary gallery.

_James Lane Allen._--James Lane Allen has done for Kentucky what Mr. Page has done for Old Virginia and Miss Murfree for the Tennessee mountaineers. A native of Kentucky (born in 1849), he graduated from Transylvania University, at Lexington, Kentucky, and taught in schools and colleges for some years. Since 1884, however, he has devoted himself to literary work. Besides writing much for magazines he has published “Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances” (1891), “The Blue Grass Region, and Other Sketches” (1892), “John Gray” (1893), rewritten and enlarged into “The Choir Invisible” (1897), “A Kentucky Cardinal” (1894) and its sequel “Aftermath” (1895), “Summer in Arcady” (1896), “The Reign of Law” (1900), published in England as “The Increasing Purpose,” and “The Mettle of the Pasture” (1903). A tendency toward didacticism and a lack of spontaneity mar the latest works of Mr. Allen; he is at his best in his earlier works, in which he revels in the beauty of the Blue Grass region and writes in the spirit of a disciple of Thoreau and Audubon. The romanticist in him was gradually transformed into the objective realist. Yet in all his work there are elements of strength and poetic beauty. By a curious coincidence another Kentucky James Lane Allen (born in 1848) a graduate of Bethany College, in which the first Mr. Allen taught, and now a Chicago lawyer, has also written numerous magazine sketches and stories.

_Hamlin Garland._--The grim, dull life of the hard-worked farmer in the Middle West has been effectively recorded by Hamlin Garland. A native of La Crosse, Wisconsin (born in 1860), Mr. Garland saw at close range the life he was to describe, in Iowa, Illinois, and Dakota. His first book was a collection of six realistic stories, “Main-Travelled Roads” (1891), which gave him a reputation, and he has continued to write in similar vein, publishing “Prairie Folks” (1892), “A Little Norsk, or Ol’ Pap’s Flaxen” (1892), “A Spoil of Office” (1892), “Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly” (1895), his best novel, “The Eagle’s Heart” (1900), “Her Mountain Lover” (1901), and “Money Magic” (1907). Mr. Garland has for the most part wisely obeyed his own dictum, to write only of what one knows; and his later work shows a notable increase in vigour and grasp of the story-teller’s art.

_Henry Blake Fuller._--Henry B. Fuller (born in Chicago, 1857) was intended for a mercantile career, but preferred literature. “The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani” (1890), first published anonymously, was praised by Lowell and Norton. In 1892 appeared “The Chatelaine of La Trinité.” In “The Cliff-Dwellers” (1893), he turned from the romantic to a sure realism in a story of Chicago life. “With the Procession” followed in 1895, being in similar vein. These stories show skill in individualisation, intense earnestness, facility, and ability to make an old theme interesting. “His picture,” says Mr. Whibley, “is never overcharged; his draughtsmanship is always sincere.”

_Stephen Crane and Frank Norris._--Stephen Crane (1870-1900), born in Newark, New Jersey, and educated at Lafayette College and Syracuse University, first entered journalism and won some distinction as a war correspondent of the New York _Journal_. His first story, dealing with slum life, was “Maggie, a Girl of the Streets” (1891), which, as Mr. Howells thinks, remains his best work. “The Red Badge of Courage” (1895), a thoroughly realistic study of the mind of a soldier in action at the battle of Chancellorsville, was altogether a remarkable achievement; it took the public by storm and brought the author a wide reputation, which was not sustained by his later work. He also wrote “George’s Mother” (1896), another slum story, “The Little Regiment” (1896), “Active Service” (1899), “The Monster, and Other Stories” (1899); and two collections of stories, “Wounds in the Rain” and “Whilomville Stories” (1900), tales of child life, which were published posthumously. His impressionism, though at times too little restrained, was often effective, and his highly coloured stories have found many admiring readers.

In the death of Frank Norris (1870-1902), another promising career was cut short. Norris managed to see a good deal of life. Born in Chicago, he studied art in Paris (1887-89) and literature at the University of California and Harvard. Like Crane he became a journalist. At the time of the Jameson Raid in South Africa he was the South African correspondent for a San Francisco paper and in 1898 did similar work in Cuba. He began publishing fiction as early as 1891 (“Yberville”), but it was not till 1899 that he became well known for “McTeague.” His later stories were thoroughly realistic. With “The Octopus” (1901) he began a trilogy which should form “an epic of the wheat.” In the first novel is described the growth of the wheat and the oppressive railroad monopoly encountered in its transportation. “The Pit” (1903) deals with the battles of the wheat speculators. “The Wolf,” unfinished, was to have dealt with the struggle for bread in a European famine-stricken community. “The story of the wheat was for him,” as Mr. Howells puts it, “the allegory of the industrial and financial America which is the real America.” The largeness of the scope of his undertaking and the robust courage and confidence with which he attacked it deserve our admiration. What he accomplished shows that he would have been equal to his task.

_Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart._--Mrs. Stuart has written highly amusing stories of negro life in the South. Born in the parish of Avoyelles, Louisiana, she was married in 1879 to Alfred O. Stuart, a cotton planter. Since 1885 she has lived in New York. Her stories include “The Golden Wedding, and Other Tales” (1893), “Carlotta’s Intended” (1894), “The Story of Babette” (1894), “Moriah’s Mourning” (1898), “Sonny” (1896), “Holly and Pizen” (1899), “The Woman’s Exchange” (1899), and “River’s Children” (1905). Writing in a natural and witty style, she has brought out with great skill the humour and pathos of the old plantation. She is a favourite contributor to the magazines.

_Paul Leicester Ford._--Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902), whose most serious and permanently valuable work was done in the field of American history, was the author of some notable works of fiction. “The Honourable Peter Sterling and What People Thought of Him” (1894) introduces an ideally noble statesman whose integrity triumphs over the sordid corruption of politics. Some points in the book are said to have been suggested by the career of President Cleveland. “Janice Meredith” (1899) is a sentimental romance of the Revolutionary War, in which a fascinating love-story is projected on an accurate historical background. Of less importance, but still most readable, are “The Great K. & A. Train Robbery” (1897) and “The Story of an Untold Love” (1897).

_Edward Noyes Westcott._--Edward N. Westcott (1847-98), a banker of Syracuse, New York, was the author of a single book, which he was unable to get published in his lifetime, but which gave him posthumous fame. The hero of “David Harum” (1898) is a shrewd Central New York Yankee, a son of the soil who with characteristic energy rose to be a banker and successful man of affairs, and who retained all his amusing traits, including a weakness for trading horses--“an optimist who has wrung from the harsh conditions of life all that it can yield.” The other characters are rather wooden, but the delineation of David Harum is strong, vital, and hence lasting. The plot is weak, but the story is true to the phases of life it depicts.

_The Younger Generation._--Space forbids more than a mention of some of the other living writers. Owen Wister (born in Philadelphia, 1860) has become well known through “The Dragon of Wantley: His Tail” (1892) and “The Virginian” (1902), in which latter we have an exciting story of a Wyoming cowboy. The much-travelled Richard Harding Davis (also a Philadelphian, born in 1864) has written racy and characteristically humorous stories of New York club and street life in “Gallegher, and Other Stories” (1891), “Van Bibber, and Others” (1892), and “Episodes in Van Bibber’s Life” (1899). Of his other stories the best known are “The Princess Aline” (1895), “Soldiers of Fortune” (1897), in which a South American revolution figures prominently, “In the Fog” (1901), a clever London tale, “Ranson’s Folly” (1902), and “The Bar Sinister” (1904). Robert W. Chambers (born in Brooklyn, 1865) is well known both as an artist and a romancer, a weaver of strange and exciting plots. Among his best books are “The Red Republic” (1894), “A King and a Few Dukes” (1894), “The Haunts of Men” (1898), stories of American or Canadian life, “The Cambric Mask” (1899), “A Gay Conspiracy” (1900), which shows the influence of Anthony Hope’s “Prisoner of Zenda,” “Cardigan” (1901), and “Iole” (1905). Newton Booth Tarkington (born in 1869 in Indianapolis, a graduate of Princeton) won fame in 1899 with “The Gentleman from Indiana” and has followed this with “Monsieur Beaucaire” (1900), a romance laid in Bath in the eighteenth century, “The Two Vanrevels” (1902), “Cherry” (1903), “In the Arena” (1905), “The Conquest of Canaan” (1905), and “The Beautiful Lady” (1905). His later work shows a gain in power. Winston Churchill (born in 1871), a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and now a resident of New Hampshire, published “The Celebrity” in 1898. “Richard Carvel” (1899) made him famous; it is a Revolutionary story of Maryland and London. He has since written “The Crisis” (1901), a substantial story of the Civil War, “Mr. Keegan’s Elopement” (1903), “The Crossing” (1904), and “Coniston” (1906), a New England story of love and politics. The mountaineer life of Kentucky furnishes John Fox, Jr., with the materials for his well told stories, “A Cumberland Vendetta, and Other Stories” (1896), “The Kentuckians” (1897), “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come” (1903), and “A Knight of the Cumberland” (1906).

Mrs. Gertrude Franklin Atherton (born in San Francisco, 1857) has made a wide reputation with her stories of early California life; some critics declare, however, that they do not accurately represent the California of old days. The first of them was “The Doomswoman” (1892). Other novels are “A Whirl Asunder” (1895), “Patience Sparhawk and Her Times” (1897), “The Californians” (1898), “American Wives and English Husbands” (1898), and “The Conqueror” (1902), which is based on the life of Alexander Hamilton. Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin (born in Philadelphia in 1857 and married to Samuel B. Wiggin in 1880) has written charming juvenile stories, “The Birds’ Christmas Carol” (1888), “The Story of Patsy” (1889), and “Timothy’s Quest” (1890), besides some stories of travel, such as “A Cathedral Courtship” (1893) and “Penelope’s Progress” (1898). Her husband died in 1889, and in 1895 she was married to George C. Riggs.

Irving Bacheller (born in 1859), a New York journalist, attracted attention by his stories, “The Master of Silence” (1890) and “The Still House of O’Darrow” (1894). His “Eben Holden” (1900), a novel of northern New York, was very successful. He has since written “Darrel of the Blessed Isles” (1903) and “Vergilius” (1904). Robert Herrick (born in 1868), a Harvard graduate and now a Chicago University professor, has written searching studies of American society in “The Gospel of Freedom” (1898), “The Web of Life” (1900), “The Real World” (1901), and “The Common Lot” (1904). He is something of a pessimist, but not unwholesome.

Edith Wharton (born in New York in 1862) began her literary career with short stories of the metropolitan society with which she had been familiar from birth: “The Greater Inclination” (1899), eight stories, “A Gift from the Grave” (1900), and “Crucial Instances” (1901). In “The Valley of Decision” (1902), “Sanctuary” (1903), and “The House of Mirth” (1905), she deals with scenes and characters of deep human interest but not easily managed; and she acquits herself with credit. Lily Bart is distinctly individualised and is worthy to be compared with Becky Sharp and Gwendolen Harleth.

Upton Sinclair (born in Baltimore, 1878), after writing a number of novels, produced in “Manassas” (1904) a thrilling romantic novel of the years just preceding the Civil War. “The Jungle” (1906), though much better known, is artistically far inferior to it. The creed of socialism is professed by both Mr. Sinclair and Jack London (born in San Francisco in 1876). London left the University of California to go to the Klondike, afterward went to Japan, and has since tramped through America and Canada for sociological study. In his best works, “The Son of the Wolf” (1900), “The Call of the Wild” (1903), and “The Sea Wolf” (1904), he has chosen to depict the tragedies of the animal world and the elemental passions in man.

Three Virginia women novelists have won distinction in recent years.

Molly Elliot Seawell (born in Gloucester County, Virginia, in 1860), a resident of Washington, began writing fiction in 1886. Among her stories are “Throckmorton” (1890), “Little Jarvis” (1890), a _Youth’s Companion_ prize story, “Midshipman Paulding” (1891), “The Sprightly Romance of Marsac” (1896), a lively story that won a New York _Herald_ prize of $3000, “The Lively Adventures of Gavin Hamilton” (1899), “The House of Egremont” (1901), “Children of Destiny” (1903), and “The Great Scoop” (1905). Her plots are sometimes slight and inconsequential, and her narrative lacks reserve; but she shows skill in the management of dialogue, and is a favourite writer.

Ellen Glasgow (born in Richmond in 1874) has found many readers with her “Descendant” (1897), “Phases of an Inferior Planet” (1898), “The Voice of the People” (1900), “The Battle-Ground” (1902), and “The Deliverance” (1904). She does not manage to escape from improbabilities, and some of her plots are desultory; yet on the whole her work maintains a high average.

Mary Johnston (born at Buchanan, Virginia, in 1870) has realised the possibilities of early Virginia history in her successful romances, “Prisoners of Hope” (1898), published in England as “The Old Dominion,” “To Have and to Hold” (1900), in England called “By Order of the Company,” “Audrey” (1902), and “Sir Mortimer” (1904). She has a sure touch, and her narrative moves rapidly.

But we have already exceeded the limits of our space. The work of Margaret Sherwood, William A. White, Brand Whitlock, Will Payne, Meredith Nicholson, George Barr McCutcheon, Jesse Lynch Williams, David Graham Phillips, Mary R. Shipman Andrews, James B. Connolly, Nelson Lloyd, George Cary Eggleston, William N. Harben, Justus Miles Forman, and many others, excellent as much of it is, can only be referred to summarily. The great number of promising writers of to-day is a matter of congratulation.

=Retrospect and Conclusion.=--We have thus traced the American novel from its first crude beginnings through a little more than a century of healthy and constant growth. It took the American novelist some three or four decades to learn to stand on his own feet; since he has learned to walk he has required very little assistance from abroad. More and more the possibilities of American life have attracted the writers of prose fiction. In the earlier decades of the last century, as was the case in Europe, the romance was the only fiction in demand; and the romance has ever been the favourite of many readers who maintain that the chief function of literature is to give reality through the alembic of the imagination. Perhaps the creed of romanticism has never been better put than by Mr. Julian Hawthorne:

The value of fiction lies in the fact that it can give us what actual existence cannot; that it can resume in a chapter the conclusions of a lifetime; that it can omit the trivial, the vague, the redundant, and select the significant, the forcible, and the characteristic; that it can satisfy expectation, expose error, and vindicate human nature. Life, as we experience it, is too vast, its relations are too complicated, its orbit too comprehensive, ever to give us the impression of individual completeness and justice; but the intuition of these things, though denied to sense, is granted to faith, and we are authorised to embody that interior conviction in romance.... And stories of imagination are truer than transcripts of fact, because they include or postulate these, and give a picture not only of the earth beneath our feet, but of the sky above us, of the hope and freshness of the morning, of the mystery and magic of the night. They draw the complete circle, instead of mistrustfully confining themselves to the lower arc.[20]

Notwithstanding the attractiveness of this artistic creed, the ranks of the out-and-out romancers have gradually thinned, as we have seen. Professor Boyesen believed that Bret Harte was the last of these. Slowly the realists, led by Howells and James, have gained ground, and for the last twenty years have almost steadily held the field. Of late, indeed, there have been some signs of a reaction; but it has as yet taken no very pronounced form.

A necessary concomitant of this tendency toward realism has been an increase in the number of “novels of the soil.” Writers have drawn what they knew best: Miss Woolson, the Lake region; Cable, Creole New Orleans; Ella Higginson and Emma Wolf, the Pacific coast; Allen, Kentucky; Miss Murfree, Tennessee; Fawcett and Bunner, New York; Henry B. Fuller and Miss Wyatt, Chicago; Miss Jewett and Mrs. Wilkins Freeman, New England. One reason why the “great American novel” has not yet been written is the very bigness of the country. No great personality has yet risen who can combine all the elements of our vast modern life into one harmonious structure. Meanwhile we have had most of the various sections of our country described in fiction by skilful hands. Types of a life that is passing away have been caught and preserved in a fiction which, though assuredly not immortal, is destined, we believe, to a long life.

Our critics have justly complained, however, of the limited range of our novelists. They are timid. They are content to paint a small canvas. They do not rise to great conceptions. They do not probe life to its depths; neither do they rise to the height of all its grandeur. This is, of course, only another way of saying that we have no supremely great novelists. But doubtless the mediocrity of our fiction is partly due to the disastrous effect of commercialism and professionalism on the novelist’s trade; though Mr. Whibley’s account of this (_Blackwood’s_, March, 1908) is exaggerated. Certainly our writers must be less eager for immediate and substantial rewards. _Poeta nascitur, non fit_; too many “made” writers are pouring out fiction to-day.

Our fiction possesses one characteristic which has often been commented upon--a general excellence of moral atmosphere. There is little American fiction that must be kept from the curious Young Person. Some critics allege that the obligation to write what anyone may be permitted to read has prevented American novelists from discussing those darker problems of sex-relations which confront us, and which should find expression in a literature adequately reflecting our intellectual and moral life; that missing any rigorous attack on these problems they find our fiction tame, insipid, wanting in vitality. But such an opinion carries with it its own condemnation. If our fiction lacks vitality, it is probably from other causes; at any rate Americans are generally content to leave matters of moral pathology to their moral surgeons, whose diagnoses and discussions are not expected to circulate promiscuously; and it is not likely that our novelists will consent to defile their pages for the sake of securing comprehensiveness in their pictures of life.

The short story has been brought by American writers to a high degree of perfection. Irving was its American father; and in the hands of Hawthorne, Poe, Fitz-James O’Brien, Edward Everett Hale, Miss Woolson, Brander Matthews, Miss Jewett, Stockton, Page, Mark Twain, Mrs. Freeman, and many others, it has become a highly flexible instrument, capable of subtle adaptations. The limitations of range and environment have made for great delicacy and precision in the minute portraits and the _genres_ to be found in large numbers throughout our short stories.

Yet notwithstanding the increase in the number and the advance in quality of our short stories, the novel continues as popular as ever. The immense vogue of the novel in America has been commented upon many times. The “best sellers” are almost always novels; and so many novels of more than average excellence are produced every year that many really superior stories do not get the immediate hearing, at least, which they deserve. That this demand for novels will continue unabated for some time is altogether likely. That another form of literature will soon take its place is quite improbable.

Apparently we have no great living poets; for various reasons we have no dramatists of note; of novelists who are at least possibilities, we have several.