MARJORIE BENTON COOKE
Of course Marjorie Benton Cooke is Bambi, or, if you prefer, Bambi is
simply Marjorie Benton Cooke. The heroine of the most amusing novel by
an American woman in many, many years couldn’t be solely the product of
an imagination however fine. She couldn’t be anything but an imaginative
introspection--by which we mean that Miss Cooke could only have created
her by following the advice of O. Henry and others before him, to “look
into your heart and write.”
No matter if not a single event of Bambi’s life is autobiographical; no
matter if her Father Professor with his mathematical flowerbeds never
lived; still less if Jarvis Jocelyn is a pure fantasy. The point is that
to write Bambi Miss Cooke had to put her real self in the midst of
imagined people and subject her real self to imagined events. This is
completely different from the usual method of the skilled fictioneer. He
builds his hero or heroine in the first place, but having made the
character and infused into it the breath of life the character does the
rest. The writer has little governance over his character’s actions;
these are determined by the character himself and the writer does not
much more than set them down. Incredible? Not in the least. Thackeray,
Scott--we don’t know how many writers--testify to the obstinacy with
which their people insist on being themselves. Why, an author is really
no better off than a parent who brings a child into the world. The
parent may transmit to the child certain traits and the author may endow
his person with certain qualities; but as the child grows up he takes
his own course rather oftener than not, and the fictional person does
always! Or if he doesn’t we see the author jerking the strings and
despise him for it, for the story rings false.
But the book _Bambi_ is another matter and precisely what the difference
consists in we have tried to show. Let us illustrate it anew. _Bambi_ is
imagined autobiography. Instead of creating Bambi and letting her go her
way Miss Cooke conducted herself through the story. Or, if you want to
put it in another way, you may say that she created Bambi and endowed
her with certain of her own traits--gayety, courage, tenderness, wit, a
love of drama--and then let her go her way. It is because of the
intimate personal quality of her heroine that Miss Cooke dedicated her
book “To Bambi, with thanks to her for being Herself! M. B. C.”
The book is a marvel--an absolute marvel. It sold heavily and promptly,
that was to be expected; but the marvel consists not in the book’s
popularity but in the extraordinary enthusiasm it stirred in its
readers. Since no one who has read it seems to be able to avoid the use
of superlatives in speaking of it--certainly this writer isn’t--it might
be best to put aside any attempt at characterization. What follows shall
be--analysis!
The first chapter takes the reader off his feet. Bambi, loving the
dreamer Jarvis though perhaps not very consciously loving him, sends for
a minister and has herself wedded to him, despite the absent-minded
objections of her father, the professor of mathematics. Jarvis needs
looking after. This perfectly implausible proceeding is made entirely
plausible--you swallow it whole and with immense relish--by just two
technical triumphs on Miss Cooke’s part.
1. Everything is in dialogue. You are not asked to believe that the
Professor is one kind of a person, Bambi another, and Jarvis a third,
and all three eminently unlikely; you see them do this and that and you
hear them say so and so. Miss Cooke doesn’t ask you to believe _her_,
she asks you to believe your senses!
2. The dialogue is witty--the wittiest--but there we go off on
superlatives again. The dialogue is witty but natural in the completest
sense of the word and the wit springs entirely from the situation. No
other wit is so good, as any dramatist will tell you.
These two things are the key to the whole story and the key to the utter
amazement which overcomes the reader when he applies the test of
probability to it--after he has read it through. Of course the wonder of
that first chapter could not be entirely sustained through 366 pages,
but by the time Miss Cooke’s capital starting situation has lost its
sharpest edge the plot has reared its head! Oh, yes, there’s a plot; all
such a story as _Bambi_ will stand; a plot with adequate suspense and a
steady sweep toward a dénouement. For in a tale like _Bambi_ you must
not have too much plot; the chief interest is ever in the charming and
lovable heroine.
But this sketch is all Bambi and none of it Marjorie Benton Cooke, of
whom Bambi is only a projection, in dotted lines, as a draughtsman would
say. Miss Cooke herself is the daughter of Joseph Henry Cooke and Jessie
(Benton) Cooke. She was born in Richmond, Indiana. In 1899 she received
the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. In
the same year she began writing for the magazines. In fact her first
printed “novel” exists as a yellowed clipping in her mother’s scrapbook.
Underneath it is penned a memorandum: “Published the Sunday after
Marjorie received her degree.” It was a whimsical episode, the story of
a lost dime, divided into two “chapters,” and appeared in the Chicago
_Record-Herald_. It contained no promise of _Bambi_.
“Marjorie and her doting parents,” as Mrs. Cooke once remarked, “thought
fame and fortune were hers to command.” They weren’t. She traveled a
long, hard road, writing scraps of humor and satire for newspapers and
magazines, concocting little stories and selling them. She was fifteen
years away from _Bambi_ when she started. But she had the gift for
dramatic recitation with which she later endowed that young woman. In
1902 she began touring the United States as a monologist. Dozens of her
monologues have been published but will not be found listed at the end
of this chapter. Miss Cooke would be the last to expect them to be. They
are interesting only as the preparation necessary to write _Bambi_,
particularly that first chapter. Miss Cooke has always been interested
in social questions, as any one who remembers Jarvis Jocelyn’s
experiences in New York will understand. She is a member of the Little
Room Club in Chicago, the Heterodoxy Club and the Women’s University
Club in New York.
Her books, as distinguished from her printed monologue booklets, began
in 1903 with _Modern Monologues_, continued in 1905 with _Dramatic
Episodes_ and _Plays for Children_, marked time in 1907 with _More
Modern Monologues_ and budded with a novel, her first novel, in
1910--_The Girl Who Lived in the Woods_. _Dr. David_ appeared in 1911;
and there were _To a Mother_, _The Twelfth Christian_, a dramatic poem,
and three one-act plays which were produced--all before _Bambi_.
_And_ Miss Cooke will play a Chopin ballade for you and talk to you with
the same lightness, deftness, and fun that Bambi displays. She has
forgotten more about the art of talking than the authors of all the
conversation books ever knew. She is not obtrusive. The manuscript of
her happiest book came to the publishers quite unheralded--just a
manuscript in a cardboard box with a note from Miss Cooke saying she
would like to have Doubleday, Page & Company consider it. Eugene F.
Saxton began it one Sunday afternoon about 5 o’clock, intending to read
until six, then go for a walk and have dinner uptown somewhere. He read
till seven, looked at the clock, and--went on reading. You can eat any
day, you know....
Later a telegram went forth: “_Bambi_ is ours. Love at first sight.”
Miss Cooke sat to Mary Green Blumenschein for the illustrations to her
book; that’s why they are what they ought to be. And you are to picture
her just as you would picture Bambi, say as sitting on a low couch, her
feet tucked in, enthroned among billowy cushions, that is, of course, if
you, the caller, are really acquainted. It will be sufficient to be
acquainted with Bambi when you call.
What else? _Bambi_ was followed by _Cinderella Jane_ and that
interesting tale of the studio cleaner who was married to the painter
without love on either side--they made a success of it and were rewarded
by becoming lovers--that tale was succeeded by _The Threshold_, in which
Miss Cooke chose a theme which would give full and legitimate play to
her interest in social problems. A rich bachelor, Gregory Farwell,
employs Joan Babcock as housekeeper and companion for himself and his
17-year-old nephew. Farwell’s employees strike; the nephew, inspired by
Joan, takes the workers’ side. The result is a thoroughly dramatic story
in which the problems of capital and labor, social relations and the
like arise fairly and squarely out of the action and are not foisted on
the reader. Miss Cooke manages exceedingly difficult material well.
If you go to interview Miss Cooke about her own beliefs on serious
subjects she will answer you out of the mouths of her people in _The
Threshold_, and chiefly from the utterances of Joan Babcock--which does
not mean that she makes her characters say what she wants to say to the
world at large. No! It means merely that she herself has advanced no
farther along the path to an answer to all these questions than Joan
Babcock got. When Miss Cooke started to write _The Threshold_ she knew,
as a good novelist does, exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to
find out how a certain type of ardent young American woman feels about
the future and its social and industrial problems. You ask: why didn’t
she go out and, finding a woman of that type, ask her? To do that was to
run risks. You might not find the young woman. She might return evasive
answers or answers either intentionally or unintentionally
misleading--so few of us really know what we think about anything in the
future! There was just one safe and certain way to set about it, and
that was to create a young woman of the sort Miss Cooke had in mind, put
her in the midst of events, and see what she would say and do, what she
would come to believe about the things ahead.
Miss Cooke’s _The Clutch of Circumstance_, on the other hand, is just a
good mystery yarn about secret service work and international plots--but
based on fact. It has a serious defect in that the heroine, some of
whose qualities are plainly exhibited for the reader’s admiration, is
guilty of atrocious treachery, becoming, in fact, a German spy!
Miss Cooke? She is going ahead, thank you! She is going ahead in the
wisest way in the world for a person of her special gifts. What was said
in _The Threshold_ about Joan is the best thing to say about her author:
“The world is thrust forward by such dynamic personalities as yours,
even by your mistakes. There is danger in action, but more in tranquil
inaction, in feeble acquiescence in the face of injustice and wrong.”
I have left untouched this chapter, written in Miss Cooke’s lifetime,
because, for the readers of her books, the picture of her as she lived
is the picture to remember; and for the time they are under the spell of
one of her stories, the fact is without significance that, in April,
1920, while in Japan at the commencement of a world tour, Marjorie
Benton Cooke died.
BOOKS BY MARJORIE BENTON COOKE
_Modern Monologues_, 1903.
_Dramatic Episodes_, 1905.
_Plays for Children_, 1905.
_More Modern Monologues_, 1907.
_The Girl Who Lived in the Woods_, 1910.
_Dr. David_, 1911.
_Bambi_, 1914.
_The Dual Alliance_, 1915.
_Cinderella Jane_, 1917.
_The Threshold_, 1918.
_The Clutch of Circumstance_, 1918.
_The Cricket_, 1919.
_Married?_ 1921.
_The Girl Who Lived in the Woods and Dr. David are published by A. C.
McClurg & Company, Chicago; Miss Cooke’s later novels are published by
Doubleday, Page & Company, New York; but The Clutch of Circumstance is
published by George H. Doran Company, New York._