Spaniard in America and in the Netherlands. It was further to enrich
its native literature by another brilliant history of the struggle for
conquest of a great nation in foreign lands. Parkman (1823-93) is the
historian of the rise and decline of France’s power in North America.
Like Motley, he was captivated by an impressive and dramatic cycle of
events, and--again like Motley--he possessed breadth of vision and
tenacity of purpose sufficient to his task. Parkman had a passion for
the wilderness;--a passion which he fed in youth and early manhood
by excursions, large and small, to the woods, the prairies, and the
mountains. In his twenties, he appears, a picturesque figure in the
great West, living and hunting with Indians, eating pemmican, and
playing host at a feast of dog-meat and tea. In spite of outdoor life
and travel, Parkman was seldom well. A serious affection of the eyes,
and nervous troubles which may have emanated from it, kept him, from
his undergraduate days, either incapacitated or on the border-line
of invalidism. He was tortured till his death by pain, lameness,
insomnia, and at times almost complete blindness. His suffering and
infirmities recall Prescott. It is not easy to decide which of the two
men struggled more heroically against overwhelming odds. As early as
his sophomore year at Harvard, Parkman planned to write the history
of the “Old French War” for the conquest of Canada; “for here, as it
seems to me,”--so he writes--“the forest drama was more stirring and
the forest stage more thronged with appropriate actors than in any
other passage of our history.” “The Oregon Trail”--an account of his
adventures on the great plains and beyond--began to appear in _The
Knickerbocker Magazine_ in 1847, and “The Conspiracy of Pontiac” came
out in 1851. Later, the plan widened to include the whole course of
the conflict in America between France and England. The result was a
series of books unexcelled in western historiography: “The Pioneers
of France in the New World” (1865), “The Jesuits in North America”
(1867), “La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West” (1869), “The
Old Régime” (1874), “Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV”
(1877), “Montcalm and Wolfe” (1884), and, finally, “A Half-Century of
Conflict” (1892). The series received the general title, “France and
England in North America.” In his “Montcalm and Wolfe,” Parkman reached
the height of his fame. Wretched health turned the author’s attention
to horticultural diversions. In 1871 he was appointed professor of
horticulture in Harvard University; in 1866 he published his famous
“Book of Roses.” His intimate knowledge of the scenes and peoples
of whom he wrote and an engaging and finished manner impart to his
historical books an unusual vivacity and charm. His work, while it
is, as he intended, “a history of the American forest,” is also the
history of two powerful and opposing systems of civilisation--“feudal,
militant, and Catholic France in conflict with democratic, industrial,
and Protestant England.” Less impulsive than Motley and less serene
than Prescott, Parkman possessed at once the ardour and the restraint
necessary to the vivid and impartial rendering of a glowing theme
vastly important in the history of the New World. Himself cast in
an heroic mould and exhibiting a fine type of the Puritan spirit,
he was at home among chivalrous men and bold and impressive deeds.
Jameson, writing of him shortly before his work was finished (see
“The History of Historical Writing in America,” 1891), declares him
to be, “next after one or two who survived from the preceding period,
the most conspicuous figure in the American historiography of the
last twenty-five years, the only historian who can fairly be called
classical.”
=Recent Historical Writings.=--Since the Civil War America has been
prolific in historical records. General histories and local histories
abound; histories of administrations, of periods, of popular movements,
indefatigable and scholarly researches in politics, war, finance, and
social and economic institutions. The literary value of these records
is not, however, to be inconsiderately judged from their bulk. Times
and standards in American historiography have changed. Among the
multitude of authors one must not look for many names which may be
written down with those of Prescott, Motley, and Parkman. Not that
the modern period is wanting in good work or able writers. These are
to be found in abundance. But most of the work belongs to science and
not to letters; and besides, eminence is not fostered by the catholic
distribution of talent and training. Jameson picks up Amiel’s blunt
opinion that “the era of mediocrity in all things is commencing” and
applies it to American historians. At the same time, this wise critic
inclines to the belief that the vast improvement in technical process
and workmanship realised within the present generation is the natural
means to the development of a more substantial and more profound
school of historians than the West has thus far created. The term
“mediocrity” does not, indeed, do full justice to the period and the
authors in question, and we must seek other grounds of excuse for the
brevity of our review of them. These grounds are found, first, in the
indirect importance to literature of the great mass of recent work,
and, secondly, in the impossibility of setting the achievements of
contemporary workers in just perspective.
The writers, great and little, of the periods already surveyed were,
in large measure, self-trained. Until the last two or three decades,
colleges and universities offered little incentive to methodical work
upon historical subjects. Even Harvard, from whose doors went one
after another the men who were to make the New England School famous,
taught history only incidentally. Now, an academic school has arisen.
Young men and women are trained in undergraduate and graduate studies
by teachers who are themselves historical writers and investigators.
Students are taught the discriminating use of historical instruments,
and sound methods of reconstruction and interpretation. The change
has been wrought under the unequal pressure of external influence,
emphasis laid upon scientific method, a quickened consciousness of
the importance and dignity of American history, and, finally, the
example of those graceful and inspiring writers who gave to Western
historiography an honourable place in the world’s literature. The
academic school owes its existence to no single founder. It is, by
its nature, a school of coöperative endeavour,--coöperation, first,
between teacher and pupil, and coöperation, later, in the conjoint
and organised labour of productive hands and brains. Among its early
advocates and promoters were Charles Kendall Adams, university
professor and president, teacher and historian, who adapted the
German seminary method to the American university; Henry Adams,
professor at Harvard University and author of a brilliant history in
nine volumes (1889-91) of the country under Jefferson and Madison
(1801-17); Justin Winsor, librarian, bibliographer, and editor of
the useful and scholarly “Narrative and Critical History of America”
(1884-89), and Herbert Baxter Adams, of Johns Hopkins, historian and
instructor of historical students. The coöperative labours of the
period have borne abundant fruit. Besides Winsor’s volumes should be
mentioned “The American Nation: a History from Original Sources by
Associated Scholars,” a gigantic work in twenty-seven volumes just
finished (1904-8) under the editorship of Albert Bushnell Hart. The
authorship is divided among a number of competent historical writers.
The collection lays claim to being “the first comprehensive history
of the United States, now completed, which covers the whole period”
from the discovery of America to the present. Similar undertakings
are, however, in progress, and a number of coöperative works of
smaller scope are already in print. Other notable histories covering
comparatively long periods of time are Edward Channing’s “A History
of the United States,” to be completed in eight volumes; a series of
nine volumes relating to preconstitutional times written by John Fiske,
after the manner of Parkman, and including “The Critical Period of
American History” (1888), “The Beginnings of New England” (1889), “The
American Revolution” (1891), “The Discovery of America” (1892), etc.;
James Schouler’s “History of the United States under the Constitution”
(1880-99); “A Popular History of the United States” (1876-81), by
William Cullen Bryant and Sydney H. Gay; “A History of the People of
the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War” (6 of the 7
volumes published, 1883-1906), by John B. McMaster; “The Constitutional
and Political History of the United States,” (1877-92), by Hermann E.
von Holst, and “A History of the American People” (1902), by President
Woodrow Wilson of Princeton University. Channing’s attempt to cover,
by the labours of a single competent scholar, the entire history of
the country is comparable to that of George Bancroft. John Fiske wrote
readable and popular narratives of historical events. He did much,
both by books and lectures, to arouse general interest in matters of
American life past and present. McMaster’s substantial and illuminating
history is social rather than political. He seeks to portray the
whole life of the people. Von Holst’s aim was, on the other hand,
political. The author was a German-American. He held, among academic
posts, professorships at Freiburg and the University of Chicago. His
critical review, often disparaging to democratic institutions, may
be taken as a counterblast to the ebullient patriotism of earlier,
native writers. As the work of a foreign observer of American affairs,
it suggests the reflections of de Tocqueville, of James Bryce, and
of Goldwin Smith. President Wilson’s five volumes contain a wise and
judicial commentary, in the form of a long and attractive essay, on the
main course of events since the days of discovery. For the multitude
of American historical writers who have treated single epochs, space
permits mention of only one or two names. James Ford Rhodes’ “History
of the United States from the Compromise of 1850” (7 volumes, 1902-6),
the work of “nineteen years’ almost exclusive devotion,” is commonly
regarded as the most thorough and best balanced study of the Civil War,
its causes and its consequences. Henry Adams has, in his “History of
the United States,” etc., investigated with competence and penetration
the administrations of Jefferson and Madison.
This meagre list of the more important productions of the academic
school clearly reveals the attraction of the American theme for the
present American historian. Capable and impressive studies of foreign
subjects there have been, it is true;--David Jayne Hill’s “History
of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe” and Henry
C. Lea’s work on the medieval church are conspicuous instances;--but
the great mass of research and writing has been gathered at home.
Governmental affairs and political events loom large. Less interest has
been taken in the subtler phases of national character and individual
motive; although Fiske and McMaster and Woodrow Wilson and certain of
the best biographers (whose important service to literature deserves
separate consideration) represent a current tendency toward reflective
and philosophical writing of a literary quality, which augurs well for
the future of American historiography.
II. THE NOVELISTS
=The Beginnings.=--American fiction was one of the latest types of
native literature to appear. The hard conditions of life imposed on
the colonists by the necessity of clearing the forests and keeping the
Indians in check were evidently unfavourable to sustained efforts in
imaginative writing. And there were other reasons for the late growth
of the novel. Except as they had a religious turn or an evident moral,
stories were likely to be looked upon by the Puritans as a species of
useless frivolity, which could have no part in the saving of souls.[3]
Again, in the struggle with the mother country the robust and scholarly
intellects of America had other matters to think of besides the
elements of pure literature. The rights of man, the basis of resistance
to tyranny, the principles of statecraft, the elements of democracy,
were among the interests that absorbed the Washingtons, the Otises, and
the Hamiltons of the latter part of the eighteenth century. But perhaps
the most important reason for the tardy appearance of American fiction
was the lack of tradition and legend. Of this Hawthorne complained as
late as 1859, in the preface to “The Marble Faun”:
No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of
writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no
antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor
anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple
daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It
will be very long, I trust, before romance-writers may find
congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our
stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable events
of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and
wall-flowers need ruin to make them grow.
Thus it was that for a long time Defoe and Fielding, Smollett and
Sterne found no imitators in America. The American novel-reader, for
the most part, was content with British provender, and satisfied his
appetite for the marvellous with Walpole’s “Castle of Otranto,” Lewis’
“Monk,” and Mrs. Radcliffe’s “Romance of the Forest” and “The Mysteries
of Udolpho.” Toward the end of the eighteenth century several writers
essayed the novel, but not with lasting success. In “The Foresters”
(published serially in _The Columbian Magazine_, and in book form in
1792), Jeremy Belknap (1774-98) produced an ingenious though trivial
allegorical tale of the colonisation of America and the rebellion
of the colonies. In this, Peter Bullfrog stood for New York, Ethan
Greenwood for Vermont, Walter Pipeweed for Virginia, Charles Indigo for
South Carolina, and so on. Ann Eliza Bleecker (1752-83) was the author
of “The History of Maria Kittle,” which in the form of a letter sets
forth some harrowing experiences among the savages during the French
and Indian War; and of “The Story of Henry and Anne,” a tale, “founded
on fact,” of the misfortunes of some German peasants who finally
settled in America; both of these were published posthumously in her
“Works” in 1793. Mrs. Susanna Haswell Rowson’s “Charlotte Temple”
(1790), a story of love, betrayal, and desertion, despite its absurdly
stilted phrases and its long-drawn melancholy, has ever been popular
with a certain class of readers; the editor of the latest edition
(1905), Mr. Francis W. Halsey, has examined 104 editions, and his list
is incomplete. An avowed antidote to “Charlotte Temple,” Mrs. Tabitha
G. Tenney’s satirical “Female Quixotism” (1808), suggests to Professor
Trent “an expurgated Smollett”; it is now unknown. Mrs. Hannah W.
Foster, the wife of a clergyman in Massachusetts, wrote “The Coquette,
or The History of Eliza Wharton, a Novel Founded on Fact” (1797), a
story of desertion, showing the marked influence of Richardson. In
the same year, appeared “The Algerine Captive,” by Royall Tyler, who
was one of the first to turn to American life as a fruitful subject
for fiction. His story is a broadly humorous picaresque tale, of the
Smollett type, which introduces rather too many wearisome details of
customs in Algiers; a fault for which his generally spirited style and
his powerful description of the horrors of a slave-ship partially atone.
Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816), the classmate at Princeton of
James Madison and Philip Freneau, wrote “Modern Chivalry, or The
Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O’Regan, His Servant”
(Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, published in four parts, 1792-7),
a modern “Don Quixote” narrating his experiences in the Whisky
Insurrection of 1794. Though widely read in its day, especially by
artisans and farmers, its literary worth was not sufficient to preserve
it. “The Gamesters,” published in 1805 by Mrs. Catharine Warren, was
likewise popular in its day; it attempted “to blend instruction with
amusement.”
_Charles Brockden Brown._--The history of the novel in America,
therefore, properly begins with Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), who
has been called “the first professional man of letters and important
creative writer of the English-speaking portion of the New World.” He
was born in Philadelphia of a good Quaker family; just forty years
earlier, his uncle, Charles Brockden, had drawn up the constitution of
the old Philadelphia Library Company. From early childhood, books were
familiar to the youthful Brown, who became an omnivorous reader, and
at Robert Proud’s school undermined his health by excessive devotion
to reading and study, so that he was always an invalid. He took up the
study of law, but soon abandoned it, despite the protest of his family,
for the career of “book-making.” After some writing of verse and of
essays, he published in 1798 a successful novel, “Wieland, or The
Transformation,” and at once followed this with five others, “Ormond,
or The Secret Witness,” (1799), “Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year
1793” (1799-1800), in which he gave an account of the ravages of the
yellow fever in Philadelphia, “Edgar Huntly, or The Adventures of a
Sleep-Walker,” “Clara Howard” (1801), and “Jane Talbot” (published
in England in 1804). From 1798 till 1801, Brown lived amid congenial
surroundings in New York; in the former year he nearly died of yellow
fever, to which his friend Dr. Elihu H. Smith succumbed. Returning
to Philadelphia in 1801, he spent the remainder of his life there;
marrying happily in 1804, editing _The Literary Magazine_, and writing
political pamphlets and works on geography and Roman history, until
consumption brought his busy and useful life to a premature end.
Brown’s novels mostly belong with the “tales of terror” so popular
in his day. A radical thinker and analyst, he rejects supernatural
agencies in his explanation of events, and relies wholly on natural
causes; but this does not diminish the number of marvels in his
tales. The plots of one or two of his stories will give an idea of
the character of all. The scene of “Wieland” is laid on the banks of
the Schuylkill, in Pennsylvania. The Wielands are a cultivated German
family. Wieland’s father has died mysteriously by what is explained as
self- or spontaneous combustion, and the son has inherited a melancholy
and superstitious mind, which develops into fanaticism. The family hear
strange voices giving commands or warnings or telling of events beyond
the reach of human knowledge. A mysterious man, Carwin, appears, with
such powers of pleasing that he becomes very intimate with the family.
At length Wieland, at the command of what he takes to be a heavenly
voice, sacrifices to God his wife and children. Confined in a maniac’s
dungeon, he bears his fate with a sense of moral exaltation. Having
escaped, he attempts to offer up also his sister, the narrator of the
story, when he learns that he has been deceived by the ventriloquism
of Carwin, whom malice has thus led to trick the family. In a frenzy,
Wieland kills himself; Carwin disappears; and the story ends with the
marriage of the sister and Pleyel, a brother of Wieland’s late wife
and now a widower. Less powerful than “Wieland,” but still superior to
Brown’s other works, is “Ormond.” An artist, Stephen Dudley, engaging
in pharmacy to support his family, is brought to beggary through the
villainy of his partner. His daughter Constantia bears up bravely
through severe trials. Just when life appears brighter, Ormond comes
upon the scene, a mysteriously powerful man, much like Falkland in
Godwin’s “Caleb Williams,” of great wealth, strong mind, and base
morals; he deserts Helena Cleves, who commits suicide, and pursues
Constantia. Stephen Dudley is murdered by an unknown hand. Having a
legacy from Helena, Constantia is about to sail for Europe with her
friend (who narrates the story) when Ormond, finding her invincible,
assaults her in a lonely house and meets death by her hand, after he
has himself slain Craig, now revealed as the assassin of Dudley at
Ormond’s instigation. Constantia afterward lives quietly with her
friend in Europe. Brown’s plots are usually disfigured by irrelevant
incidents and superfluous characters; he frequently changed his plans
and even his heroines, and, writing with great rapidity, often with a
greedy printer at his elbow, he utterly failed to weld together the
elements of his stories and often to give them proper motivation. His
characters are drawn in bold and clear outlines, but are frequently
uninteresting--being too sentimental or inconsistent, or given to long
and prosy soliloquies. It cannot be affirmed that Brown understood
human nature well. Of style he had none; his pages are innocent of
epigram or humorous turn; he employs very little dialogue and makes
but scanty and awkward use of dialect. Yet in certain passages, in
describing great crises, he exhibits considerable vividness and power.
Brown’s chief merit consists in the sense of reality with which he
contrives to invest his scenes of gloom and terror.
The power possessed by this rare genius, says Mr. James H.
Morse,[4] of throwing gloomy characteristics into his theme, was
equalled by no other American writer. In the matter of morbid
analysis, Poe, in comparison with Brown, was superficial, Hawthorne
was cheerful, and the modern school of French writers are feeble.
With Poe, we can see that the gloom came by an effort of a spurred
imagination; with Hawthorne, that it was the work of an artistic
sense; but with Brown, it seems to have been constitutional--the
gift at once of temperament and circumstances.
Brown was an admirer of William Godwin and obviously imitated not only
his method of developing characters but also his style. It may be added
that Brown in turn found many readers in England, where several of his
novels were republished and where, as we have seen, “Jane Talbot” was
first published. Professor Dowden quotes Peacock as saying that of all
the works with which Shelley was familiar, those which took the deepest
root in his mind were Brown’s four novels, Schiller’s “Robbers,” and
Goethe’s “Faust.” Brown’s influence upon subsequent American writers,
moreover, was not inconsiderable, and his place in our literature, if
not high, is at least honourable.
_John Davis_, an Englishman about whom little is known, wrote several
novels of American life, most of which were published here, and became
somewhat popular. He lived in the United States from 1798 till 1802,
and travelled over a large part of the country. His first novel, “The
Original Letters of Ferdinand and Elizabeth” (1798), was a conventional
story of seduction and suicide. It was followed by “The Farmer of New
Jersey” (1800), “The First Settlers of Virginia” (1805), a pioneer
historical novel, crude and ill managed, “Walter Kennedy, an American
Tale” (London, 1805), and “The Post Captain” (1813). The most that can
be said of these stories is that their author was shrewd and observant,
and had some journalistic skill.
_Mrs. Sally Keating Wood_ (1760-1855), wife of General Abiel Wood, of
Maine, may be mentioned as the author of “Julia and the Illuminated
Baron” (1800), which recalls the mysterious evil power and atheistic
tendencies attributed to the Bavarian order of the Illuminati,
established in 1775, which, though suppressed in 1780 by the Elector,
was supposed to have secretly persisted and spread over Europe. Mrs.
Wood wrote also “Dorval, or The Speculator” (1801), “Amelia, or The
Influence of Virtue” (1802), “Ferdinand and Elmira, a Russian Story”
(1804), and “Tales of the Night” (1827), besides several novels that
were never published. Mrs. Wood placed many of her scenes in Europe.
_Isaac Mitchell._--At Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1811, was published
in two volumes “The Asylum, or Alonzo and Melissa, an American Tale,
Founded on Fact.” Of the author of this Gothic romance, Isaac
Mitchell,[5] little is known save that he was successively the editor
of _The Farmer’s Journal_, _The Political Barometer_, and _The
Republican Crisis_, all of Albany, New York, and that after losing his
position through political changes, he moved to Poughkeepsie. The story
was later abridged and compressed into one volume by Daniel Jackson,
Jr. (Mitchell’s name disappearing from the title-page), and in this
form was long popular throughout America; Mr. Reed thinks that for
nearly a quarter of a century a new edition appeared practically every
year. The narrative is full of elaborate descriptions of nature.