MODERN AMERICAN WRITERS
THE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS
The Women Who Make
Our Novels
BY
GRANT M. OVERTON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
_First printing December 12, 1918_
_Second printing April 25, 1919_
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
_Edith Wharton_ 1
CHAPTER II
_Alice Brown_ 11
CHAPTER III
_Ellen Glasgow_ 20
CHAPTER IV
_Gertrude Atherton_ 41
CHAPTER V
_Mary Roberts Rinehart_ 54
CHAPTER VI
_Kathleen Norris_ 68
CHAPTER VII
_Margaret Deland_ 78
CHAPTER VIII
_Gene Stratton-Porter_ 88
CHAPTER IX
_Eleanor H. Porter_ 108
CHAPTER X
_Kate Douglas Wiggin_ 121
CHAPTER XI
_Mary Johnston_ 132
CHAPTER XII
_Corra Harris_ 153
CHAPTER XIII
_Mary Austin_ 164
CHAPTER XIV
_Mary S. Watts_ 177
CHAPTER XV
_Mary E. Wilkins Freeman_ 198
CHAPTER XVI
_Anna Katharine Green_ 204
CHAPTER XVII
_Helen R. Martin_ 215
CHAPTER XVIII
_Sophie Kerr_ 226
CHAPTER XIX
_Marjorie Benton Cooke_ 238
CHAPTER XX
_Grace S. Richmond_ 246
CHAPTER XXI
_Willa Sibert Cather_ 254
CHAPTER XXII
_Clara Louise Burnham_ 267
CHAPTER XXIII
_Demetra Vaka_ 284
CHAPTER XXIV
_Edna Ferber_ 292
CHAPTER XXV
_Dorothy Canfield Fisher_ 298
CHAPTER XXVI
_Amelia E. Barr_ 304
CHAPTER XXVII
_Alice Hegan Rice_ 313
CHAPTER XXVIII
_Alice Duer Miller_ 320
CHAPTER XXIX
_Eleanor Hallowell Abbott_ 326
CHAPTER XXX
_Harriet T. Comstock_ 334
CHAPTER XXXI
_Honoré Willsie_ 342
CHAPTER XXXII
_Frances Hodgson Burnett_ 357
CHAPTER XXXIII
_Mary E. Waller_ 369
CHAPTER XXXIV
_Zona Gale_ 377
CHAPTER XXXV
_Mary Heaton Vorse_ 386
INTRODUCTION
This book, the rather unpremeditated production of several months’ work,
is by a man who is not a novelist and who is therefore entirely unfitted
to write about women who are novelists. Several excuses may be urged;
the author is, by general agreement, young. He has to do with many
novels, being, indeed, a sort of new and strange creature, a literary
reporter self-styled, a person connected with a newspaper and charged
with the task of describing new books for the readers thereof. As he
could make no critical pretensions he had to fall back upon a process
peculiar to newspaper work, the attempt at a simple putting before the
public of facts, of things lately said and done--in short, of news. He
had to regard a new book as a piece of news to be communicated as
honestly and as entertainingly as any other occurrence. And so, here. He
has tried to be a good reporter of the personalities, performances and
methods of work of some of the best known American women novelists.
An effort has been made to include in this book all the living American
women novelists whose writing, by the customary standards, is
artistically fine. An equal effort has been made to include all the
living American women novelists whose writing has attained a wide
popularity. The author does not contend, nor will he so much as allow,
that the production of writing artistically fine is a greater
achievement than the satisfaction of many thousands of readers. It may
be more lasting; it is not more meritorious; and to attempt to institute
comparisons between the two things is absurd. The critic may be
justified in treating of Edith Wharton and ignoring Gene
Stratton-Porter. The literary reporter who should do such a thing
doesn’t know his job.
It is, therefore, to be feared that this is no book for highbrows. But a
lower forehead and a broader outlook have their advantages. In the
striking popularity of a particular storyteller a thoughtful observer
may see important and significant evidences of the tendencies of his
time. And that may be much more worth his while than the most careful
speculation as to who will be read fifty years from now.
The order in which authors are taken up in the book is accidental and
therefore meaningless. The reader is recommended to follow his own
inclination in perusing the chapters. They are entirely detached from
each other, as are the subjects considered except for an occasional
reference, in discussing one, to another’s work. These references, and
in fact all the discussions of various books, are to be taken as
expository and not critical. If a thing is stated to be good, bad or
indifferent the statement is made as a statement of fact and not of
personal opinion.
The justification of this book is the need of it. It is ridiculous that
there should be nothing easily accessible about such writers as Edith
Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Kathleen Norris, Mary Johnston, Mary S. Watts,
Anna Katharine Green, Clara Louise Burnham, Amelia E. Barr and Edna
Ferber. The condensations of _Who’s Who in America_ are dry bones; books
on living American writers are all “studies” or compilations of a highly
selective sort; their authors want to be revered by posterity as persons
of wonderful critical perception and judgment. The authors themselves
have not the time to satisfy their readers’ curiosity and their
publishers hesitate lest they may not remain their publishers!
And so the literary reporter steps in. Some of the chapters in this
book, generally condensed in content, have appeared in the columns of
_Books and the Book World_, the literary magazine of _The Sun_, New
York, of which he is the editor. In their preparation he has been
wonderfully helped by the authors themselves and by other individuals
and publishing houses, for which he makes acknowledgment and returns his
thanks in a note elsewhere in the book.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My indebtedness to various persons and sources is repeatedly made
manifest in the text. Only the co-operation of publishers has made
possible the preparation of these sketches in a short time. I wish
particularly to thank the following for important help:
Houghton Mifflin Company and Mr. Roger L. Scaife and Mrs. Helen
Bishop-Dennis for material on Mary Roberts Rinehart, Eleanor H. Porter,
Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mary Johnston, Mary Austin, Willa Sibert Cather,
Clara Louise Burnham and Demetra Vaka.
Doubleday, Page & Company and Mr. Harry E. Maule for material on Ellen
Glasgow, Kathleen Norris, Gene Stratton-Porter, Corra Harris, Helen R.
Martin, Sophie Kerr, Marjorie Benton Cooke, Grace S. Richmond and
Harriet T. Comstock.
The Macmillan Company and Mr. Harold S. Latham for material on Alice
Brown and Mary S. Watts and Zona Gale.
Harper & Brothers and Miss Hesper Le Gallienne for material on Gertrude
Atherton, Margaret Deland and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
The Century Company for material on Alice Hegan Rice, Alice Duer Miller
and Eleanor Hallowell Abbott.
Frederick A. Stokes Company and Mr. William Morrow for material on
Gertrude Atherton, Edna Ferber, Honoré Willsie and Frances Hodgson
Burnett.
Dodd, Mead & Company for material on Anna Katharine Green, Gertrude
Atherton, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Eleanor Hallowell Abbott.
Henry Holt & Company and Miss Ellen Knowles Eayrs for material on
Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Charles Scribner’s Sons for material on Edith Wharton.
Little, Brown & Company for material on Mary E. Waller.
THE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS
CHAPTER I
EDITH WHARTON
The order of authors in this book is accidental and the circumstance
that the first chapter of the book is upon Edith Wharton is also
accidental, also and therefore; which is to say that it is not
accidental at all. For if there is any lesson which life teaches us it
is the existence of an order, a plan, in unsuspected places. To say,
therefore, that a thing is accidental is to pay it the most glorious
compliment. It is to say that it is ordered or ordained, decreed,
immutably fixed upon from the Beginning--not of a book but of a
Universe. There is about anything accidental something absolutely
divine. To dart off at a tangent (for a mere moment) there was this much
in the divine right of kings--an accident at the beginning of it. Had
the kings contented themselves with this accidental character, had they
preserved the spontaneity that surrounded the first of their crowd,
there would be more of them left! But such reflections and the working
out of them, a pleasurable kind of intellectual counterpoint, may be
left to Gilbert Keith Chesterton.
We are concerned wholly with the women who make our novels and, by the
accident of title if you like, more with the women than with their
novels. The two are no more perfectly separable than milk and cream and
very often the best thing to do is not to try to separate them, but
rather to stir them up together. As the only excuses for a book--other
than a work of fiction--are either that it presents facts or suggests
ideas, we shall try to talk rather simply (much more simply than in our
first paragraph of this chapter) about American women novelists and
their books--simply and honestly. If we say little about “literature” it
is because what is usually described as literature is nothing better
than a pale reflection of life.
Edith Wharton comes first in this book that she may the better stand
alone. She has always stood alone. The distinguishing thing about her is
the distinguishing thing about her work--aloneness, which is not the
same thing as aloofness. She is not aloof. At 56 she is working in
France, doing that which her hand finds to do. Her aloneness arises from
the facts of her life. Never were so many favoring stars clustered
together as for her when she was born. She had everything.
She was born in New York (item 1) in 1862, Edith Newbold Jones, the
daughter of Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones (item
2). She was educated at home (item 3) and was married to Edward Wharton
of Boston in 1885 (item 4--no! countless items of luck had already
intervened!). In other words, Mrs. Wharton, granddaughter of General
Ebenezer Stevens of Revolutionary fame, came of distinguished family,
was the child of extremely well-to-do parents, had every advantage that
careful instruction, generous travel and cultivated surroundings could
confer upon her. Much of her life has been spent in Italy; a perfect
acquaintance with great painting and architecture, everywhere so
discernible in her work, has always with her been the customary thing.
Private tutors in America and abroad spared her the leveling processes
of forty lines of Virgil a day and ten mathematical sums each night.
They touched her as a sculptor touches his clay, firmly and caressingly
and only to bring out her peculiar excellences, only to help her native
genius to expression. Think of it--Italy and all the other rich
backgrounds, means, social position, fine traditions, the right
surroundings, the right mentors, the right tastes and a considerable
gift to begin with! What a mold! It is exquisite, perhaps unmatched in
the instance of any other novelist. It is what we dream of for genius
and it is what genius would smash to fragments! The very fact that Mrs.
Wharton _had_ a mold is the best evidence that she is not a genius in
the most discriminating sense of a most indiscriminately used word.
She is not a genius but she moves and always has moved in a world of
geniuses. From childhood she had, of course, an easy familiarity with
French, German and Italian. The ordinary bounds upon reading--the only
way of keeping the company of the supremely great of earth--were thus
swept a measureless distance away. French, German and Italian as well
as English literature were accessible to her--and the French includes
the Russian, of course. She read widely and we are told that “when she
came upon Goethe she was more prepared than the average to take to heart
his counsels of perfection and reach after a high and effective
culture!” Reach? Not upward, surely; there was nothing above her.
Outward, perhaps. At any rate, here was Mrs. Wharton in the actual
presence and company of a genius if ever there lived one. It is
agonizing to think what Goethe would have said were he alive these days.
He would have said the supremely scathing thing, the thing that would
have withered forever the moral cancer of his countrymen, and we cannot
articulate it. A magical mind and a magical tongue and a magical
pen--Goethe. He was always saying sesame. We, who have not his genius,
have to batter down the barred door.
It is to Goethe above all other literary influence that Mrs. Wharton
feels indebted. Strike out the word “literary.” The influence of Goethe
is not a literary influence, but an influence proceeding directly from
the heart of life itself. What sort of an influence is it? High, pure,
clean and yet human. Intangible, too; about all you really can say of it
is that it is like the company of some people who bring out all the best
that is in you. They do not put into you anything new. They draw you
out, or rather, they draw something out of you. At the risk of shocking
the fastidious reader and to the joy of the literally-minded we may say
that they are the spiritual equivalent of the mustard plaster. They
have an equal drawing power and efficacy, but they do not draw out the
ache but the great glow and spirit which are the incontestable proof of
the existence in the human soul of something immortal.
Mrs. Wharton read widely, as we say, and she read in the main “standard”
fiction. Her taste is for George Eliot and the ethical teachings of that
earlier woman novelist. Her taste is equally for Gustave Flaubert, the
“craftsman’s master,” the writer who teaches writers how to write. You
learn the innermost secrets of your writing craft from Flaubert and then
you put aside everything you have learned from the master and learn from
life. Balzac, Thackeray, Dickens and Meredith have been Mrs. Wharton’s
steady diet; she has re-read them so often as repeatedly and contentedly
to fall into arrears with respect to current fiction. She has had always
a great interest in biology and in whatever touches upon the history of
human thought. This, in brief, is the substance of Edith Wharton the
woman and the background of Edith Wharton the novelist.
We shall not discuss Mrs. Wharton’s books in detail in this chapter and
book for the best of reasons--they leave no room for two opinions of her
work. Of almost no other novelist whom we shall consider would it be
possible to say this; indeed of some American women novelists there are
nearer twenty-two than two opinions. Some writers, like Gertrude
Atherton, are subjects of perpetual controversy; others are the cause of
wide but sharply defined cleavages of opinion--Gene Stratton-Porter, for
example. The work of still others is more properly matter for
speculation as to what they may do than estimate of what they have done.
But Mrs. Wharton falls in none of these classifications. There is only
one opinion about her work: it is excellent but lifeless; it is Greek
marble with no Pygmalion near. From this sweeping verdict three--and
only three--of her books are to be excepted. They are _Ethan Frome_ and
_The House of Mirth_ and _Summer_. In these three books you can feel the
pulse beat. In _Ethan Frome_ the pulse is the feeble quiver of the
crushed and dying human heart; in _The House of Mirth_ there is the slow
throb of human suffering and anguish, mental no less than spiritual; in
_Summer_ there is the excited and accelerated vibration of human
passion.
It will be taken as a very dogmatic piece of business on our part when
we say that her work leaves no room for two opinions. Was there ever a
bit of writing, some will ask, which could not give birth in the minds
of readers to more than one opinion? Often, indeed, twin opinions are
born to the same reader!
We must answer that here and hereafter we are dealing with easily
ascertainable facts and not indulging in criticism. Mrs. Wharton’s work
leaves room for only one opinion simply because those who might form
another opinion do not read her. And those who do not read her take
their opinions from those who do and then, following the instinct of our
natures, declare (quite honestly) the borrowed opinion as their own. Our
real audacity consists in the assertion, implied in what we have said,
that of all the thousands who read Mrs. Wharton not one believes in his
heart for one solitary instant that the mass of her fiction is alive.
They look upon her work as they look upon the Winged Victory; it is
ravishingly beautiful, it has perfection of form, it has every attribute
of beauty possible of attainment by the consummate artist, but it has
also the severe limitations of any form of art.
We must pause here a moment to be emphatic. Art is not life and never
can be. Life is not art and never can be. This is just as true of
writing as of painting or sculpture. All art is necessarily dead. All
art is necessarily a _representation_ of life or some aspect of it. The
moment a person begins to paint or to model or to write and allow
himself to think of any kind of _art_ in what he is doing, he goes into
a fourth dimension--and life exists in only three dimensions. This is
not to say that art is undesirable; it is highly desirable, is, in fact,
almost as necessary to our souls as a fourth dimension is to the
mathematician. The fourth dimension is a spiritual necessity to the
mathematician; it is the future life in the terms of his trade.
And so, if a writer would keep life in what he writes, he must not think
of art at all. He must not have any of the artist’s special
preoccupations. He must go at his writing just as he would go at living.
If he could keep self-consciousness of what he is doing or trying to do
entirely out of his work he would succeed completely. And succeed
completely he never does. How nearly he can come to complete success we
know from some of Kipling, O. Henry, most of Conrad, one book of Thomas
Hardy’s--we name a few modern writers just for the sake of specific
illustration and illustration instantly familiar to any reader of this
book.
Mrs. Wharton is sometimes spoken of as a pupil of Henry James, and the
resemblance is strong in some of her work to that of James, but she is
not his pupil. It is simply a case of the similar products of largely
similar inheritances and environment. Both these writers were from birth
well-to-do, both had exceptional education and lived and moved in
cultivated surroundings. Their endowments were not unlike though more
disparate than their circumstances. James had a greater gift and ruined
it more completely. _The Portrait of a Lady_ is the everlasting witness
of what he might have done by the fact of what, in that superb novel, he
did do. _Ethan Frome_, _The House of Mirth_ and _Summer_ are all
inferior to _The Portrait of a Lady_ and all superior to James’s later
work.
If any one tells you otherwise it is because he is thinking in terms of
art and not in terms of life. And some will tell you otherwise, for the
world never has lacked those to whom art was more than life just as the
world has never lacked those to whom a future life was more than the
life of this earth. With these we have no quarrel; we can but respect
them; God made them so. It takes all kinds of people, we agree, to make
a world; if that is so, manifestly it takes all kinds of views to get
the true view. In any triangle the sum of all three angles is equal to
two right angles. If, therefore, one of the angles of the triangle is a
right angle, the sum of the other two will equal a right angle. The
angle of outlook which sees only the artistry in a piece of literary
work added to the angle of outlook which sees only the livingness in the
same work may make the right angle which we all aspire to look from.
BOOKS BY EDITH WHARTON
_The Greater Inclination_, 1899.
_The Touchstone_, 1900.
_Crucial Instances_, 1901.
_The Valley of Decision_, 1902.
_Sanctuary_, 1903.
_The Descent of Man, and Other Stories_, 1904.
_Italian Villas and Their Gardens_, 1904.
_Italian Backgrounds_, 1905.
_The House of Mirth_, 1905.
_Madame de Treymes_, 1907.
_The Fruit of the Tree_, 1907.
_The Hermit and the Wild Woman_, 1908.
_A Motor-Flight Through France_, 1908.
_Artemis to Actæon and Other Verse_, 1909.
_Tales of Men and Ghosts_, 1910.
_The Reef_, 1912.
_The Custom of the Country_, 1913.
_The Book of the Homeless_, 1915.
_Fighting France_, 1915.
_Ethan Frome._
_The Decoration of Houses._
_The Joy of Living._
_Xingu and Other Stories._
_Summer_, 1917.
_The Marne_, 1918.
_French Ways and Their Meaning_, 1919.
_The Age of Innocence_, 1920.
_The Glimpses of the Moon_, 1922.
_The Reef, Summer, The Marne, French Ways and Their Meaning, The Age of
Innocence, and The Glimpses of the Moon were published by D. Appleton &
Company, New York; Mrs. Wharton’s other books were published by Charles
Scribner’s Sons, New York._