MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN
If this chapter on Mary Wilkins Freeman, one of the best known of
American writers, seems disappointingly short, the explanation is to be
found in three considerations:
Mrs. Freeman is primarily a short story writer and not a novelist. Her
successes have been with short stories, and they have been many.
Both as a short story writer and as a novelist her work is unimportant,
largely ephemeral and extremely overrated. Ephemerality in itself does
not matter; most things are ephemeral measured by any absolute
standards. Books come and go, opinions change as they ought to; the
fleeting quality of the mass of fiction is to be taken as a matter of
course; but when there is a persistent effort to maintain that such
writing as Mrs. Freeman’s has any permanent value as a contribution to
literature, it is necessary to deny strongly and without qualification
even at some risk of doing her really excellent work injustice. The
reader must not construe what we say about her work as an expression of
opinion, but as an assertion of fact. Dogma against dogma! Mr. Howells
and his school have so long instructed us to accept without question
their estimates of her work that it becomes imperative to cut the ground
from under them. They insist upon the literary value of such writing as
Mrs. Freeman’s. There is no such thing as literary value in writing.
There are no literary values, there are only values in life. And what is
Mrs. Freeman’s value in life? Slight, reminiscential, pleasing,
sometimes entertaining, occasionally revelatory of human nature, but
never for a moment revealing anything unexpected, never anything of
which we have not been perfectly aware--her stories are cordially
welcome and likeable (in general) without having the slightest relation
to the business of living. We read them and sustain a faint
consciousness that _once_ in some place among a few people they may have
had some bearing on life. We read them and observe that in the main they
are told skillfully. We are very glad to have them--and that is all.
The third reason for the brevity with which we deal with her is purely
historical. If this book were being written in 1898 instead of 1918, she
would occupy, and rightly, a considerable space in it. But as recently
as 1914 a book of her stories was put out with the short story, _The
Copy-Cat_, occupying first place in it and giving its title to the book!
The story deals with a little girl, Amelia, who was forever imitating
another little girl, Lily. Amelia was plain and Lily was pretty:
“Amelia, being very young and very tired, went to sleep. She did not
know that that night was to mark a sharp turn in her whole life.
Thereafter she went to school ‘dressed like the best,’ and her mother
petted her as nobody had ever known her mother could pet.
“It was not so very long afterward that Amelia, out of her own
improvement in appearance, developed a little stamp of individuality.
“One day Lily wore a white frock with blue ribbons, and Amelia wore one
with coral pink. It was a particular day in school; there was company,
and tea was served.
“‘I told you I was going to wear blue ribbons,’ Lily whispered to
Amelia. Amelia smiled lovingly back at her.
“‘Yes, I know, but I thought I would wear pink.’”
This in the year of our Lord 1914! This in the year when blood began to
flow as it has never flowed before; when free peoples everywhere awoke
to the presence of Black Evil on earth; when big, generous America with
all her faults was not exactly likely to be thrilled or touched or
enlightened by the recital of how a plain little girl finally got up
enough gumption to wear pink ribbons instead of blue. And yet we suppose
the people who set such store by “literary” values thought this a
“delightful little story”--“so true a picture of children”--“and wasn’t
that a charming conceit of sleeping in each other’s beds!” But it is
wretched stuff, really. At the end Mrs. Freeman simply tells you that
after “that night” Amelia’s mother’s whole nature changed and the
uninterestingly imitative little girl developed “a little stamp of
individuality” and will you please swallow all this quickly on Mrs.
Freeman’s mere say-so because she is tired of writing and the thing is
already the right magazine length anyway. Bah!
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is an extremely modest person. She is of New
England stock in both lines. Her ancestors were Puritan colonists. She
was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, in 1862, and received her education
there and at Mount Holyoke Seminary. Ten years of her life were spent in
Brattleboro, Vermont, but after the death of her parents she returned to
Randolph where she made her home until her marriage on New Year’s Day,
1902, to Dr. Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen, New Jersey. Since then Mrs.
Freeman has lived in Metuchen.
Exactly when the intention to write first came to her, Mrs. Freeman does
not remember. She always felt that she must work at something, but did
not know what it was to be. Though she was fond of painting and
sculpture, her chief interest as a girl was reading. Socially, her
tastes were exceedingly catholic, and she was on the best of terms with
all her neighbors, many of whom she found herself studying as
characteristic New England types, thus unconsciously preparing herself
for the moment when she was to become a writer. She likes “people who
drop their g’s and use the double negative, as well as people who
don’t.”
Success as a writer came to her instantly. She suffered none of the
rebuffs and delays and discouragements usual to the young author. Her
earliest work was done for children and took the form of short stories
and poems in juvenile magazines. Her first grown-up story was _The Old
Lovers_, sent to _Harper’s Bazar_. Miss Mary L. Booth, then editor of
that periodical, upon receiving this contribution, written in a cramped
and unformed handwriting, evidently that of a child, determined upon a
hasty reading, but was so struck in the opening paragraphs with the
humor and the pathos of the story that she promptly sent Mrs. Freeman a
check. In the same mail with the _Bazar_ acceptance came a notification
that her story, _The Shadow Family_, had captured the prize in a
competition conducted by the Boston _Sunday Budget_. Both the checks
seemed very large to the new writer. “My delight and astonishment knew
no bounds.”
Mrs. Freeman is a rather small woman, singularly unaffected, cordial,
frank. A friend once described her thus: “A little, frail-looking
creature, with a splendid quantity of pale-brown hair, and dark-blue
eyes with a direct look and a clear, frank expression--eyes that readily
grow bright with fun.” Mrs. Freeman has plenty of humor, is quiet and
whimsical, is fond of country ways, but confesses to fear of cows,
caterpillars and all creeping things.
Her popularity has been sufficient to bring about the translation of a
number of her books into various European languages.
BOOKS BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN
_The Debtor._
_The Fair Lavini._
_A Humble Romance_, 1887.
_A New England Nun_, 1891.
_Young Lucretia_, 1892.
_Jane Field_, 1892.
_Giles Corey_, 1893.
_Pembroke_, 1894.
_Madelon_, 1896.
_Jerome--A Poor Man_, 1897.
_Silence_, 1898.
_Evelina’s Garden_, 1899.
_The Love of Parson Lord_, 1900.
_The Hearts of Highway_, 1900.
_The Portion of Labor_, 1901.
_Understudies_, 1901.
_Six Trees_, 1903.
_The Wind in the Rose Bush_, 1903.
_The Givers_, 1904.
_Doc Gordon_, 1906.
_By the Light of the Soul_, 1907.
_Shoulders of Atlas_, 1908.
_The Winning Lady_, 1909.
_The Green Door_, 1910.
_The Butterfly House_, 1912.
_Yates Pride_, 1912.
_The Copy-Cat and Other Stories_, 1914.
_The Jamesons._
_People of Our Neighborhood._
_Edgewater People_, 1918.
_Published by Harper & Brothers, New York; but The Butterfly House is
published by Dodd, Mead & Company, New York._