graduate and Presbyterian clergyman, was once popular but is now little
read. From 1850 till 1865 he was minister of a church in Austin, Texas,
where he had many of the experiences utilised in his stories. His most
important fiction was “Inside, a Chronicle of Secession,” which was
written secretly during the war, ran as a serial in _Harper’s Weekly_,
and appeared in book form in 1866; it gives a vivid picture of Southern
life and feeling. Some of his later books were “Oak Mot” (1868), “The
New Timothy” (1870), “Mose Evans” (1874), “Carter Quarterman” (1876),
“A Year Worth Living” (1878), “Colonel Dunwoodie” (1878), “His Majesty
Myself” (1879), and “Blessed Saint Certainty” (1881). While not
striking their roots very deeply into life and character, his books are
marked by sincerity and intense earnestness.
_S. Weir Mitchell._--Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (born in 1830) is a
distinguished physician of many-sided fame. A native of Virginia, he
studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Jefferson Medical
College, from which he was graduated in 1850. He began writing fiction
during the Civil War, and in July, 1866, contributed to _The Atlantic_
a remarkable story, “The Case of George Dedlow.” But it was not
until about 1880 that he began to devote himself more seriously to
literature. He has written “Hephzibah Guinness” (1880), three stories
of Quaker life in Philadelphia; “In War Time” (1885); “Roland Blake”
(1886), the earlier part of which deals with the Civil War; “Far in
the Forest” (1889), a story of character influence, the scene of which
takes place in the forest of Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary
War; “Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker” (1897), a story of Philadelphia during
the War of Independence, which ranks among the few great American
novels; “The Adventures of François” (1898), a romance of the French
Revolution, the hero being a light-hearted little waif who has some
strange adventures; “The Autobiography of a Quack” (1900), a study of
the mind of a professional medical knave; “Constance Trescot” (1905), a
study of an unusual character, skilfully handled, the scene being Paris
in the sixties; and “A Diplomatic Adventure” (1906). Dr. Mitchell’s
interest in problems of abnormal psychology has led him to treat some
themes which in the hands of any but a born story-teller would have
resulted in merely sensational novels. His stories all show keen powers
of analysis and character-drawing and a kindly and wholesome optimism.
_Beecher and Higginson._--Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87), amid the many
activities of a busy clerical and journalistic life, found time to
write one novel, “Norwood, or Village Life in New England” (1867),
in which occur descriptive and narrative passages rich in insight
and humour. There is only a slight plot; the movement is leisurely;
we are chiefly interested in the characters, who include the usual
personages to be found in a village and some curious and amusing people
as well. The book is partly autobiographical, with a vein of romance
running through it. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born in 1823) is
chiefly known as an essayist, but wrote one capital story, “Malbone,
an Oldport Romance” (1869), which deserves wider reading as a subtle
study of temperament; the scene is obviously Newport, Rhode Island. It
“is largely a transcript from actual life, the chief character being
drawn from the same friend of Higginson, William Hurlbert, who figures
as Densdreth in Winthrop’s ‘Cecil Dreeme.’”[15] In “Madame Delia’s
Expectations” (_The Atlantic_, January, 1871, reprinted in “Oldport
Days,” 1873), Colonel Higginson showed that he could tell a short story
well.
_Mark Twain._--The literary productions of Mr. Clemens will be recorded
elsewhere; here a few words may be said of his place as a writer of
fiction. In technique, it cannot be maintained that he stands high; his
narrative wanders whither it listeth, blameless of compact construction
or climax; his style is not free from faults. Yet in spite of these
defects his name has become “a household word in all places where
the English language is spoken, and in many where it is not.” He has
created two characters--Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn--who will
live long as humorously conceived but true American boys. Pudd’nhead
Wilson and the Connecticut Yankee may fade into oblivion, but it seems
unlikely that the heroes of Mark Twain’s most typical books will soon
be allowed to withdraw from our group of favourites. Moreover, Mr.
Clemens has enshrined the Mississippi River of his youth in a kind
of homely, virile prose-poetry; he has recorded, in narrative which
Mr. Thompson rightly calls “firm and vigorous,” the impression which
the great river made upon his youthful mind. Nowhere else shall we
find such descriptions of Mississippi River life in the fifties.
Artistically defective his work is indeed; but to it cannot be denied
the qualities of eloquence, naturalness, and sincerity. The work, like
the man, is genuine.
_Bret Harte._--The stirring, primitive, lawless life of early
California found its painter in Francis Bret Harte, who early dropped
his first name from his literary signature. He was a native of Albany,
New York (1839), his ancestors being English, German, and Hebrew.
His father, a teacher of Greek, died when the son was but a child.
Receiving only a common-school education, Harte went with his family
in 1854 to California, which for five years had been the Mecca of the
gold-hunter and the gambler. At first he tried teaching and mining,
gaining from either business little more than experience, of which he
was to make good use in later years. In 1857 he became a compositor
for the San Francisco _Golden Era_. Some of his unsigned sketches
attracted the notice of the editor, who ordered him to exchange his
composing-stick for a writer’s desk in the office. He later joined
the staff of _The Californian_, to which he contributed the clever
parodies on contemporary writers of fiction later published (1867) as
“Condensed Novels.” From 1864 till 1870, he was secretary of the United
States Branch Mint; during this time he wrote much of his best poetry.
When _The Overland Monthly_ was projected in 1868, no other name than
Harte’s was considered for the editorship. Mr. Noah Brooks has told
how he and Harte agreed to write each a short story for the first
number, and how Harte with his usual fastidiousness about words was
unable to finish his in time. When it did appear, however, “The Luck of
Roaring Camp” and the story which followed it, “The Outcasts of Poker
Flat,” made Harte famous; the latter story is generally considered the
most perfect of his works. In 1870, Mr. Harte was appointed professor
of recent literature in the University of California; but in the
following year he resigned this post, settled in New York, and devoted
himself to lecturing and to writing, especially for _The Atlantic
Monthly_. In 1878, he was appointed United States consul at Crefeld,
Germany; from 1880 till 1885 he held a similar post at Glasgow. From
1885 until his death, in 1902, Harte lived in London, busily engaged in
literary work. His best-known works are “Mrs. Skagg’s Husbands” (1872),
“Tales of the Argonauts, and Other Stories” (1875), “Gabriel Conroy,”
his only long novel (1876), “Drift from Two Shores” (1878), “The Twins
of Table Mountain” (1879), “Flip; and Found at Blazing Star” (1882),
“In the Carquinez Woods” (1883), effectively expressing the wonder
and mystery of the forest, “On the Frontier” (1884), “Maruja” (1885),
a melodramatic novel, “Snow-Bound at Eagle’s” (1886), “A Millionaire
of Rough and Ready” (1887), “The Crusade of the Excelsior” (1887),
“A Phyllis of the Sierras” (1888), “The Argonauts of North Liberty”
(1888), “A Sappho of Green Springs” (1891), “Colonel Starbottle’s
Client and Some Other People” (1892), “Sally Dows” (1893), “A Protégée
of Jack Hamlin’s” (1894), “The Three Partners” (1897), “Under the
Redwoods” (1901). Throughout his life, it will be seen, he continued
to write of the old California days, of a régime which has long since
passed away, but which he immortalised.
It was Harte’s rare privilege to be the first to work in a mine which
has yielded rich ores to many since his day; to write of an elemental,
half-savage life in which convention was all but unknown, and the
background of which was the rugged simplicity and majesty of the
Sierras. “His actual discovery,” says Mr. Logan, “was Nature in an
aspect always grand, sometimes awful, at a moment when her primeval
solitude was invaded by a host that had cast human relationships
behind, and came surging towards an unknown land, all under the sway
of a devouring passion--the thirst for gold.” He had his own way
(possibly influenced by Dickens) of presenting these rough scenes.
He did not idealise this primitive life; he did not as a rule weave
it into romance (even Mr. Boyesen cites only “Gabriel Conroy” as
a romantic novel); he did not seek to interpret it or to make it
symbolise religious or moral ideas. To him it was a very real world;
and with true eye and sure touch he sought to portray it impartially,
as it was; the reader might draw his own moral--if he happened to need
one. It is this unerring instinct of the artist that places Harte in
the ranks of the greater story-tellers.
His powers, however, had their limitations. He found himself unable
to sustain interest in a long story. “Gabriel Conroy,” though it
contains interesting scenes and some of his best characters, is quite
without unity--a bundle of impressions in which the same characters are
presented hardly twice alike. He has been criticised, too, for endowing
otherwise worthless characters with some marked virtue; but perhaps it
is only fair to say, with Mr. Logan, that “the virtue is generally a
primitive one, and is rarely either inconsistent or improbable.”
In his later years, Harte did little to increase his reputation. The
same characters, the same types, appear again and again; but there is
no added source of interest, no maturer observation of men and manners.
His reputation continues to rest on the score of early tales, terse and
full of energy, with which he dazzled and delighted the reading public
of the later sixties and the seventies.
_Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward._--It is of course a far cry from Harte
to Mrs. Phelps Ward, who came into notice in the East in the same year
in which _The Overland_ was started. Mrs. Ward was born at Andover,
Massachusetts, and was the daughter of Professor Austin Phelps of
Andover Theological Seminary. In 1888 she was married to the Rev.
Herbert D. Ward. She is the author of a long list of kindly and
readable stories, none of which quite attains to distinction in point
of quality, but several of which have been popular and influential.
Beginning with “The Gates Ajar” (1868), half novel, half threnody,
she continued with “The Silent Partner” (1870), “The Story of Avis”
(1877), a favourite with many, “An Old Maid’s Paradise” (1879) and its
sequel “Burglars in Paradise” (1886), “Friends, a Duet” (1881), “Doctor
Zay” (1882), “Beyond the Gates” (1883), which elaborates the idea of
her first story, “A Singular Life” (1894), her best book, and “The
Man in the Case” (1906). Her plots, sometimes conventional, are never
complicated and are skilfully managed; and her women characters are
generally true to life. Of her men, for example Emanuel Bayard, so much
cannot be said. She collaborated with her husband in writing two or
three novels which were not very successful.
_Constance Fenimore Woolson._--A grandniece of Fenimore Cooper, Miss
Woolson (1848-94) has taken a place among women novelists scarcely
less honourable than that held by her kinsman among American novelists
in general. Born at Claremont, New Hampshire, she was educated in
Cleveland, Ohio, and at a French school in New York City. After her
father’s death in 1869, she spent her summers at Cooperstown, New
York, or on the Great Lakes, and her winters in the South. Her first
literary effort, “The Happy Valley” (_Harper’s_, July, 1870) met with
immediate approval. From then till her death, she contributed regularly
to _Harper’s_. She published “The Old Stone House” (1873), “Castle
Nowhere; Lake Country Sketches” (1875), “Rodman the Keeper; Southern
Sketches” (1880), “Anne” (1882), “For the Major” (1883), “East Angels”
(1886), her most elaborate and perhaps her best novel, dealing with
ante-bellum Georgia coast life, “Jupiter Lights” (1889), and “Horace
Chase” (1894), by many preferred to any of her other works. Possessing
decided gifts as a novelist, she had a high standard of excellence.
Some of her plots are intricate, but all are skilfully worked out.
Charles Dudley Warner spoke of her as one of the first in America
to bring the short story as a social study to its present degree of
excellence. Her best work should have more than a merely ephemeral life.
_Henry James, Jr._--A subject of contention among critics, having
an ardent if not a large following, but standing for something like
caviare to the general public, Henry James is to-day one of the most
striking figures among American novelists. He was born in New York,
April 15, 1843, the son of Henry James the theologian, and a younger
brother of William James the psychologist. His family was Irish on the
father’s side and Scotch on the mother’s. He has told us of his early
years and of how, while the other boys were at their games, he used
to sit on the hearth-rug studying _Punch_ and learning about the life
which John Leech’s pictures suggested to him. At eleven he was sent
abroad and spent six years in England, France, and Switzerland, deeply
interested in European culture, art, and social tradition. On his
return, his family made their home at Newport, Rhode Island. In 1862 he
entered the Harvard Law School, but found more pleasure in the lectures
of James Russell Lowell on literature than in the reading of law. Soon
after leaving Cambridge, having succeeded with some early ventures in
_The Galaxy_ and other magazines, he began to devote himself wholly to
literature. Since 1869 he has lived abroad, chiefly in Paris, London,
and Italy. His life has been a quiet, uneventful study of men and
women, of books, of places.
Mr. James has been a fairly prolific writer, of constantly increasing
subtlety and attention to finish. His first stories, curiously enough,
revealed a romantic, at times even sensational, bent, which he soon
outgrew. His first novel, “Watch and Ward” (1871), was promising but
not otherwise significant; “Roderick Hudson” (1875) was quite equal to
the best of his later work, combining profound analysis of character
with perhaps more sentiment than appears in his later works. It is a
study of the artistic temperament in the person of a young American
sculptor who is taken to Italy by a rich virtuoso. The story deals with
two favourite studies of Mr. James: the contrast between Americans and
the older races with which they come into contact in Europe, and the
contrast between the artistic and the prosaic person. The first of
these contrasts forms the subject of “A Passionate Pilgrim” (1875),
including that exquisite story “The Madonna of the Future,” of “The
American” (1877), and of “Daisy Miller, a Comedy” (1878), in which a
burlesque element is noticeable. From the year 1875, then, may be said
to date the “international novel” of comparison or contrast, which
has become so immensely popular. In “The Europeans” (1878), the scene
changes to Boston and the author shows how the life of the Puritans
appears to foreign visitors. Other international studies are found in
“An International Episode” (1879), “The Portrait of a Lady” (1881),
one of his most popular longer novels, and “The Siege of London, The
Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View” (1883). In 1880 (dated
1881) appeared “Washington Square,” a quiet story laid in a formerly
aristocratic quarter of New York; the tale has been called “a miracle
in monotone.” Then came “The Bostonians” (1886), which Professor
Richardson speaks of as typically “long, dull, and inconsequential,
but mildly pleasing the reader, or at times quite delighting him,
by a deliberate style which is enjoyable for its own sake, by a
calm portraiture which represents the characters with silhouette
clearness, and by some very faithful and delicately humorous pictures
of the life and scenery of Eastern Massachusetts.” “The Princess
Casamassima” (1886) continues the career of an American adventuress,
Christina Light, who has figured in “Roderick Hudson,” to which it
thus forms a kind of sequel. Less read than some others, it is one
of the most remarkable of Mr. James’ stories. In 1888 appeared “The
Aspern Papers, and Other Stories” and “The Reverberator,” a comedy of
manners recalling “The American,” and dealing with the incompatibility
between the cultivated and the vulgar relatives of two lovers and
with the odious violation of private life by modern journalism. “The
Tragic Muse” (1890), a study of a psychological problem of art and
love, is complicated and difficult in the extreme; a friend expressed
a sound view of it to Mr. James: “I will say it is your best novel if
you promise never to do it again,” probably meaning that the extreme
limit of elaboration had been reached. Three collections of stories,
“The Lesson of the Master, and Other Stories” (1892), “The Real Thing,
and Other Tales” (1893), and “Terminations” (1895), include various
comic sketches, with some preciosities, and a well-told ghost-story,
“Sir Edmund Orme,” the _motif_ of which was later repeated in “The
Turn of the Screw” (1898), a horrible, nerve-racking tale. “The
Other House” (1896) is a highly dramatic, even sensational, story of
passion, culminating, strange to say, in a murder; yet Rose Armiger
is Mr. James’ one supremely passionate woman. In 1897 were published
“The Spoils of Poynton” and “What Maisie Knew,” the latter a rather
unpleasant story of domestic unhappiness and sordid intrigue; Maisie
being a little girl whose life was spent alternately in the company
of divorced parents, equally guilty, each of whom had remarried. “In
the Cage” (1898) is a tissue of shrewd guess-work woven by a lively
telegraph girl who becomes interested in the love affair of two others.
“The Two Magics” (1898) includes “The Turn of the Screw” and “Covering
End,” a pleasant comedy about an English country house. “The Awkward
Age” (1899) is a unique example of subtle, often elusive, analysis of
character--of character which some might say was not worth analysis,
with unimportant incidents and little action. “The Soft Side” (1900)
is a collection of studies of abnormal character and curious psychical
phenomena, in which the rhythm of the prose is at times remarkable for
its suggestiveness. “The Sacred Fount” (1901) is a fanciful sketch
dealing with the idea of youth as a rejuvenator of age. “The Wings of
the Dove” (1902) has been called the most remarkable book that Mr.
James has written. It is a long story of the old warfare between the
flesh and the spirit, in which the unseen forces from another world
play an unlooked-for part. Mr. James’ most recent stories are “The
Better Sort” (1903), “The Ambassadors” (1904), and “The Golden Bowl”
(1905).
It is difficult to sum up in a few words the leading traits of
Mr. James. It is easy to speak of him as reeling off volumes of
abstruseness in which the petty ambitions of worthless Americans are
analysed with a minuteness like that in which the leisurely student of
anatomy delights; but such innocuous “criticism” does not even touch
Mr. James. Undoubtedly it has been increasingly hard of late years
to follow him; his later stories, with their proneness to excessive
psychological delving, have a certain analogy to Browning’s later
poems, which became harder to follow. But judged by his best works,
such as “Roderick Hudson,” “The Princess Casamassima,” and “The Other
House,” he must be pronounced a great artist, a keen analyst of the
small section of life and the few types of character which he has
chosen to study (and if one does not care for the types, one may still
recognise the art with which they are presented); and as always a loyal
American. He is not a master of style; yet at his best he embodies
certain qualities of supreme excellence in style--ease, intimacy,
suggestiveness, lucidity, sincerity. He is never a preacher, nor is
he ever the mere idler and _dilettante_. He is very much in earnest;
and in consequence the moral effect of his exposition of life is
wholesome. “Out of the corruption,” says Miss Cary,[16] “of a society
which Mr. James depicts with unsparing detail and without satire
or didactic comment, rises the flame of purity. Some one among his
characters is sure to stand for invincible goodness.” If the language
of his later books becomes unintelligible, it will of course be a pity;
but it seems quite unlikely that the great works of his middle period
will soon cease to have a large body of appreciative and delighted
readers.
_Edward Eggleston._--The Hoosier life of southern Indiana has been
described by Edward Eggleston (1837-1902). A native of Vevay, Indiana,
he received only a brief school education, but taught himself several
languages. He first became (1857) an itinerant Methodist minister in
southern Indiana and then for nine years was a Bible Society agent in
Minnesota. From 1866 till 1879, he was engaged partly in journalism and
partly in a Brooklyn pastorate; then he retired to his country place on
Lake George to devote himself entirely to literature.
His first book to win attention was “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” (1871),
which first appeared as a serial in _Hearth and Home_. Having read
Taine’s “Art in the Netherlands,” he says, he proceeded to apply
Taine’s maxim, that an artist ought to paint what he has seen. The
result was so faithful a picture that in spite of its faults it has a
permanent value as a record of one phase of early Western life. Dr.
Eggleston also wrote “The End of the World” (1872), which deals with
the Millerites, who in 1842-3 proved by the Book of Daniel that the
end of the world was at hand; “The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873);
“The Circuit Rider, a Tale of the Heroic Age” (1874), in which he drew
on his own early experiences; “Roxy” (1878), a story of picturesque
incident and character development laid in the time of the Tippecanoe
campaign of 1840; “The Graysons, a Story of Illinois” (1888), a
realistic picture of pioneer life in which Abraham Lincoln figures as
a character; “The Faith Doctor” (1891), which deals with Christian
Science and kindred phenomena in New York, and which shows the
influence of Mr. Howells; and “Duffels” (1893), a collection of stories.
Dr. Eggleston himself spoke of his attitude in literature as a constant
struggle “between the lover of literary art and the religionist, the
reformer, the philanthropist, the man with a mission.” We are not of
course surprised to find an editor of _The Sunday School Teacher_
making his moral too prominent. But while this mars much of his work,
his novels may still be said to be fresh and genuine transcripts of
life.