CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM
To write twenty-six books is something, is it not? To have written
twenty-six books which have sold half a million copies (the publisher’s
offhand guess) is something else again and more. Clara Louise Burnham
has done that; and the cold arithmetical statement does not begin to
convey the real nature of her achievement. You must read her to know how
capable a novelist she is, how expert, how gifted with humor, insight,
fertility in those slight inventions which make up the reality of a
fictionist’s whole. Mrs. Burnham’s writings are associated in the minds
of many thousands who have not read her tales, or have read only a few
of them, with the doctrines of Christian Science. And it is true that
she is the author of several novels in which the principles of this
faith are of the essence of the stories. Equally true is it that she has
said of her book, _Jewel_:
“I like _Jewel_ best. I think she is my high water mark. It is a
Christian Science book and without the Christian Science terminology
that is used in the story it, well, it would be a kind of second _Little
Lord Fauntleroy_, and besides, it wouldn’t be _Jewel_.”
Which may be so but which does not hold true of _The Right Princess_.
There the identification of Frances Rogers’s beliefs with the faith of
which Mrs. Eddy was the founder is not indispensable to the narrative.
Miss Rogers need not have been a Scientist. We should still have an
unusual and effectively told story, a novel quite as entertaining and
worth the reader’s while as _The Opened Shutters_, from which the
terminology of the Scientists is entirely absent.
The point we would make, then, the point that ought, in sheer honesty,
to be made at the very outset of any consideration of Mrs. Burnham’s
work, is her genuine and incontestable achievement as a straight-way,
out-and-out, talented story-teller, a pure and simple fictioneer, an
experienced and popular American novelist. That some of her novels have
probably done more to put Christian Science precepts before the world in
what the Scientist believes to be the true light than anything ever
written other than the church’s texts--that this is so may be granted.
But it is not a fact we have to concern ourselves with here. We concede
it and pass on. We pass on in either direction, going back to the
fourteen books which preceded _The Right Princess_ or forward to the
eight novels which have appeared since _The Leaven of Love_. They are
the bulk of Mrs. Burnham’s work. And yet--it is to be feared we shall
have to bestow most of our attention upon the six books between! They
represent Mrs. Burnham’s widest popularity and what is possibly her best
work judged strictly in literary aspects. But enough of this for the
present; it is time enough to cross bridges when we come to them. Let us
first get a glimpse of Mrs. Burnham herself.
A tall woman, spare in build, with light hair, blue eyes and a merry
manner, a conversationalist with anecdotes, a manner of great
simplicity, serenity, calm pleasantness. She was the eldest daughter of
George F. Root, as popular a songwriter as this country has produced.
Born in Newton, Massachusetts, she has lived most of her life in
Chicago. She summers in Maine. Her education was in the public and in
private schools in Chicago, and at the New Church School, Waltham,
Massachusetts. Politically she is, or was, a Progressive; and at this
point we cannot do better than to quote her own words in the Chicago
_Record-Herald_ of November 24, 1912:
“People who see the large, sunshiny hotel room in which I work, whose
bay windows command a wide expanse of lake, say that they no longer
wonder at the good cheer of my stories. If I ever had the blues I should
believe in the water cure. I have always believed in the ounce of
prevention. Indeed, I try it all summer up in Maine.
“Bailey Island, my summer home, is only a small green hill in the superb
sweep of the Atlantic. My cottage stands eighty feet above the sea, and
there is nothing but water between me and Europe. It is great fun for a
woman who usually lives at a hotel to keep house three months of the
year.
“But Bailey Island is not an inspiring place. I never work in summer. My
father always told me to let the water in the reservoir fill up then.
Besides, a brick wall is all the view I want when I am at work. Even
this dear Lake Michigan is almost too distracting at times.
“Lake Michigan explains why I have not followed the tide of successful
writers to New York. I love Chicago, with all its soot and wind. I am
naturally optimistic, and therefore expect that within the next decade
the Illinois Central will be electrified. Then won’t this spot be a
winter paradise?
“Nevertheless, it is tempting to use my island as a background for my
stories. In _The Inner Flame_ I have gone back to it again. Besides, the
Villa Chantecler is a real place--a henhouse cleared and renovated by an
enthusiastic young artist and given that clever name. The Chantecler
studio was too picturesque an incident not to become material.
“However, very little of my material is taken from real life. It is
playing with fire to draw recognizable portraits of people; but I fancy
nearly all authors are quite aware that they are making composite
pictures of friends or acquaintances. For instance, the man who inspired
the character of Philip Sidney, the hero of _The Inner Flame_, is a
brother-in-law of John McCutcheon; while Edgar Fabian’s personality and
mannerisms are copied faithfully from another one of my friends whose
character is as different from Edgar’s as can be imagined. It is very
seldom that any individual appeals to me as material, but when he or she
does, I generally fall. Inasmuch as in all my books there is not one
villain, I should not think they would mind.
“I have been asked whether I have a ‘method’ in writing. I
have--necessarily. Genius has inspirations. It writes in the night, or
walking in the field, and burns cords of cigarettes. Mere talent must
be persistent and industrious, and can often forego cigarettes.
“When I was a very young girl I read something Miss Mulock said apropos
of writing which made a deep impression. It was this: ‘An author should
go to his desk as regularly as a carpenter to his bench, and with as
little thought of inspiration.’ I point to my twenty novels as a proof
that I have heeded that direction; for if any one doubts the manual
labor of book writing let him pick up any story and copy a chapter from
it in long hand. I have averaged one novel a year, yet my maximum period
of daily work is three morning hours.
“If a young person aspiring to print should ask me whether there is a
definite way to begin, I should tell him to start by catching a big
brother. Preferably his own, for any one else’s might be a hindrance.
Mine is Frederick W. Root, ex-president of the Literary Club, Cliff
Dweller, Little Roomer, and in many other respects an orthodox
Chicagoan. He has been my mascot ever since the day when he started on
the labor--and hard labor it was--of drawing a young sister away from
the music which was her chief interest and starting her at story
writing. You know I am one of the Roots. My father, George F. Root, was
known chiefly by his war songs, _Tramp, Tramp, Tramp_ and _The Battle
Cry of Freedom_ and so on, but every home in the land knows his simple,
melodious songs, and I should like to feel that the vitality in my
unpretentious stories is akin to the spontaneous harmony that flowed for
fifty happy years from his clear mind.
“I suppose the reason I did not wish to write was that music satisfied
me. My brother persisted against my indifference for a year. At last we
were both exasperated. He shut me into a room with him one day, and
opening a very business-like looking knife, declared with a fearful
scowl that I should not leave that room alive unless I promised to try
faithfully to write a story. I laughed a little and wept a little, and
at last promised to show him that I couldn’t do it.
“Some one asked him once in my presence why he was so certain that I
could write. He replied: ‘Oh, she has a picturesque way of telling
things and isn’t too much hampered by the truth.’ I forgive him even
such aspersions. He is an example of what ‘a heart at leisure from
itself’ can do for another. I owe him everything; above all the blessed
assurance which sometimes reaches me that my stories help others.
“It is wonderful that I met no obstacles in starting. With no conscious
preparation I was like a ship ready to be launched. Fred pushed me off
into deep water.
“I enjoy my work, but not quite in the carefree way I used to enjoy it.
With each new book now I am conscious of some anxiety not to disappoint
my large parish; not to go backward. Both in books and plays I believe
the destructive is doomed. In this world there exists only one rose
without a thorn. There are many larger, more alluring, more fragrant,
but there is only one thornless rose; it is work that you love.”
Mrs. Burnham rather minimizes the difficulties of getting started. Her
first stories were unfavorably passed upon but the verdicts did not
deter her. A poem sent to _Wide Awake_ was her first accepted work. _No
Gentlemen_ was her first novel. It should be stated that her mother also
was musically gifted. Though born in Newton, Massachusetts, the girl
lived for some years in North Reading, Massachusetts. She was nine when
the family went to Chicago to live. She was married young and it was
after her marriage that her brother induced her to write. She is a
member of the Little Room Club of Chicago and lives there at The Elms
Hotel. Her first play, or rather the first play made from one of her
books, was _The Right Princess_, and when, after the usual hitches, it
was staged smoothly at the Alcazar Theater in San Francisco late in
1912, Mrs. Burnham confessed to the dramatist’s deepest thrill. “I will
not act the doting parent except to say that after so many years of
seeing one’s characters in black and white on the printed page you can’t
imagine how fascinating it is to watch them move about in the flesh,
your own creations, speaking your own lines; and then my first--my very
first--villain lives in that little play.”
To get to Bailey Island, Mrs. Burnham’s summer home in Maine, you go
first to Portland, where the author is as “widely and favorably known”
as if she had lived there all her life. It is, in fact, almost a quarter
of a century since she began spending her summers in Maine. She has
failed to show up but rarely since 1894, although she did spend two
summers abroad and one visiting Yellowstone Park. “I only spared a
summer to go to Yellowstone because it was open only in summer,” she
explained afterward. Her Bailey Island house, a roomy shingled
structure, stands on a steep, shelving headland, not rocky but covered
with grass and with a pebbled beach at its foot. It is called The
Mooring. Beside it stands her brother’s house, of the same character but
a little larger. The view is over the Atlantic and Casco Bay and you may
see the White Mountains clearly. The story of how Mrs. Burnham came to
live there is related, with changes of names, in her novel _Dr.
Latimer_. The old tide mill, which figures so importantly in _The Opened
Shutters_, was a real mill which, two years after the novel’s appearance
in 1906, sank into the sea. Do you remember this passage in the last
chapter of _The Opened Shutters_?
“She paused, her lips apart, her eyes wide, for all at once she caught
sight of the Tide Mill. Every one of its shutters had turned back. The
sunlight was flooding in. She grew pale, sank down upon a rock near by,
and gazed.” And then a few pages later John Dunham’s words to Sylvia
Lacey:
“‘You said Love would open the shutters, and it has.’” The incident is
charged with a special significance in the story. It appears that when
the real mill disappeared a coincidence was noted, the sort of thing
that many persons prefer to think no coincidence at all. We quote from
the Portland _Evening Express_ of July 31, 1909:
“It seems that one day last summer Captain Morrill of the Harpswell
Steamboat Company, who is not too fond of story reading, picked up _The
Opened Shutters_ to read. His wife in telling about it to Mrs. Burnham
said that he read the story far into the night, not being willing to put
it down till he had read the last word. The next day when he was sailing
down the bay, his attention was suddenly directed to the old Tide Mill.
He looked at it long and steadily. Could it be? Were his eyes deceiving
him? Had he read so late and thought so deeply on the story that things
did not look quite natural to him? He looked at the old mill again. Yes,
it was sinking into the sea--and the shutters were wide open! The sun,
too, was shining through. For years these old shutters had not let in a
rift of light; but now they were aflood with it.”
Those who do not hug the supernatural are at liberty to suppose that the
strain of settling and sinking unbarred and flung open the shutters. Of
Captain Morrill it may be noted that his presence of mind and bravery
several years earlier had saved the lives of Mrs. Burnham and other
passengers in a collision between the steamboat Sebascodegan and a
revenue cutter. But for him _The Opened Shutters_ would never have been
written.
The beginning of this capital story was not with the Tide Mill, however,
but with the name Thinkright Johnson. Like certain persons whose
appearance before Mrs. Burnham’s mind’s eye has compelled her to write
about them, this New Englandish appellation gave birth to a book.
Thinkright Johnson--Thinkright Johnson; the name haunted Mrs. Burnham
for days and weeks, “till I knew that the only way I could have any
peace was to write something about him.”
It was the same way with Jewel. She kept coming before her author. “She
is the exact type of one of my little nieces, in character, looks, and
even to the things that she says. In some way I felt compelled to write
about her.”
On the other hand the story of _The Right Princess_ came to Mrs. Burnham
one evening when she was all dressed for the theater. “As I stood in my
room, all ready to go, it began to come to me. I drew off one of my
gloves and sat down to my desk just to jot down a few of the ideas; but
the whole thing grew so rapidly in my mind that I did not realize
anything in the world about me again, till I found myself removing one
of my shoes many hours later.
“The book was practically conceived and written in a single night. But,
ordinarily, I just live with my characters after they have come to me.
Of course it is usually the leading character of a story that occurs to
me first, and then I let him or her gather about them the characters
which they would naturally know or come in contact with. Then I just let
them say the things which they would naturally say to each other. Of
course I accept and reject what my characters shall say in print,
coördinating and assorting it into the plot; but they develop the plot.
“My hours are from 9 to 12 in the morning. Whatever I write comes to me
perfectly easily and naturally, and I rarely ever make any change in my
first copy. My mother used to say that I wrote just as other people
hemmed handkerchiefs. Writing has never meant any struggle whatever to
me.
“Stories are to entertain, and they cannot do this if they are unhappy,
and then, all my early stories I used to read to my father, and he
particularly disliked anything that was unhappy in them and urged me to
take it out.”
Among Mrs. Burnham’s close friends are the brothers George Barr
McCutcheon, the novelist, and John McCutcheon, the cartoonist; and
George Ade. Charles Klein, the playwright, was a personal friend also.
It is improper to use the word trilogy in speaking of Mrs. Burnham’s
Christian Science novels, since a trilogy, rightly speaking, is a group
of three novels in which one or more characters persist, or which have a
common setting. If we can speak of a trilogy based on an idea or set of
ideas then Mrs. Burnham’s Christian Science trilogy consists of _The
Right Princess_ (1902), _Jewel_ (1903) and _The Leaven of Love_ (1908).
_The Opened Shutters_ (1906) is free from the special terminology of the
Scientists, though saturated with their principles and beliefs in the
character of Thinkright Johnson and later of Sylvia Lacey.
_Heart’s Haven_ (1918) is Mrs. Burnham’s account of May Ca’line, a
village beauty who, as between two lovers, kept faith with the one to
whom she had betrothed herself. Her son marries a girl of no breeding
and is saved from disaster by his mother’s rejected lover, whose story
he does not know. May Ca’line herself is later the means of restoring
her son’s fortunes. There is a double love story very pleasantly told
and very happily worked out.
Though with _The Leaven of Love_ Mrs. Burnham has given over writing
Christian Science novels the underlying ideas of her work, which were
there before she wrote _The Right Princess_, which were there when she
wrote _Dr. Latimer_, remain unaltered and always expressed. These ideas
are those of peaceful and happy existences, of the validity of mental
experiences, of the influence of intellectual environment. Thus as
lately as 1916, in _Instead of the Thorn_, she gives us the story of a
Chicago girl brought up in luxury, whose father is ruined in
circumstances that seem to her to involve his business associate. The
fact that this young man is in love with the girl sets up the
complication, or struggle, necessary to make a novel. The girl is
finally persuaded to go to New England for rest, and Mrs. Burnham
directs the reader’s attention less to the solution of certain external
problems than to the way in which simple, quiet village life restores
the heroine’s mental poise and happiness. As for the proof that Mrs.
Burnham’s faith was antecedent to the first of her Christian Science
novels what clearer evidence need be asked than Helen Ivison’s
characterization of Dr. Latimer in the story, _Dr. Latimer_?
“The secret of his influence over people is only that absolute trust in
God which he has learned somehow in life’s school. He puts self out of
the way more than any one we ever knew, and so a power shines through
him which is not of this world, and people, when they come near him,
feel all that is morally best in them being drawn forward, and are
conscious of crowding out of sight all that they would be ashamed to
have come to his notice.”
Nothing better illustrates the quality of Mrs. Burnham’s humor--a humor
that makes her stories palatable reading even where the reader disagrees
violently with the ideas set forth--than the chapters in _Jewel_ where
Jewel is suffering from what those about her agree to be fever and sore
throat. Dr. Ballard has prepared medicine in a glass of water. Jewel is
to take a couple of spoonfuls of the “water” to satisfy Mrs. Forbes.
Instead she drinks heavily from an unmedicated pitcherful. By evening
she is much better. Then does the doctor, who thinks he has tricked
Jewel by persuading her to trick the housekeeper, learn that he has been
fooled instead.
“‘Didn’t you drink any of the water?’ asked Dr. Ballard at last.
“‘Yes, out of the pitcher.’
“‘Why not out of the glass?’
“‘It didn’t look enough. I was so thirsty.’
“Mr. Evringham finally found voice.
“‘Jewel, why didn’t you obey the doctor?’ ...
“Jewel thought a minute.
“‘He said it wasn’t medicine, so what was the use?’ she asked.
“Mr. Evringham, seeming to find an answer to this difficult, bit the end
of his mustache.”
Equally amusing, equally good as humor, is Jewel’s behavior with respect
to the overshoes which she is ordered to wear. At first she wears them
regardless. Then she is told to wear them only when it rains. A rainy
day dawns. Grandfather Evringham comes downstairs in bad humor.
“‘Beastly weather.’” Jewel inquires:
“‘But the flowers and trees want a drink, don’t they?’
“‘’M. I suppose so.’
“‘And the brook will be prettier than ever.’
“‘’M. See that you keep out of it.’
“‘Yes, I will, grandpa; and I thought the first thing this morning, I’ll
wear my rubbers all day. I was so afraid I might forget I put them right
on to make sure.’”
Recovering shortly Mr. Evringham observes:
“‘The house doesn’t leak anywhere. I think it will be safe for you to
take them off until after breakfast.’”
Now this is excellent humorous writing and Mrs. Burnham’s novels are
filled with it, even her Christian Science novels, perhaps those
particularly; it is so good simply because she has most thoroughly
assimilated her material before starting to write. How many writers more
famous than she, more gifted, possibly, from a critical standpoint,
would have made a sorry failure of such books as _Jewel_ and _The Right
Princess_ we don’t care to think. But you may see the disaster any day
in the case of writers like Winston Churchill, engrossed by certain
political and ethical ideals, and Ernest Poole, whose fine novel _The
Harbor_ failed of the highest rank simply because he had not assimilated
the sociological ideas which he wished to present through his
characters. It is continually happening, this effort of the good artist
to handle material he has not mastered; and as surely as he essays the
task he leaves his place as a novelist to mount the pulpit of the
preacher, the rostrum of the reformer, the soapbox of the agitator--and
a fine story is spoiled beyond all salvaging.
But when Mrs. Burnham writes of Christian Science beliefs, ideas and
mental attitudes she is not writing primarily to lay those things before
the reader. She is writing to tell a story. These are the elements of
her story. From them she weaves her web of fancy but they are the colors
and not the pattern.
In the depiction of character, notably the strongly accentuated
characters of New England, Mrs. Burnham is unfailingly and admirably
successful. _The Opened Shutters_ lends itself from the start to the
happy illustration of this faculty. Who more accurately observed and
justly reported than Miss Lacey, Judge Trent and John Dunham? Miss Lacey
meets the judge’s housekeeper, old Hannah, and exclaims:
“‘I just met Judge Trent, Hannah. Dear me, can’t you brush that hat of
his a little? It looks for all the world like a black cat that has just
caught sight of a mastiff.’”
Martha Lacey’s attitude toward Judge Trent is summed up in the refrain
continually sounding at the back of her head:
“‘If I’d married him, he’”--would have done so and so or wouldn’t have
done something else. No two ways about that! The consciousness of this
stern and immutable fact is what makes Judge Trent’s life one long
sensation of relief at having been refused.
“The judge softly closed the door behind her. ‘There, but for the grace
of God,’ he murmured devoutly, ‘goes Mrs. Calvin Trent.’ Then he
returned to his desk, put on his hat, and sat down at his work.”
Plots? There are hundreds of writers who can build twenty-story plots
with express elevator service and private subway stations. There aren’t
so many who can see people clearly and see them whole and set them down
brightly on paper. Mrs. Burnham’s novels will be widely read and enjoyed
for so long as she writes them and afterward for many a day.
BOOKS BY CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM
_The Quest Flower._
_Flutterfly._
_The Golden Dog._
_No Gentlemen_, 1882.
_A Sane Lunatic_, 1883.
_Dearly Bought_, 1884.
_Next Door_, 1885.
_Young Maids and Old_, 1886.
_The Mistress of Beech Knoll_, 1887.
_Miss Bagg’s Secretary_, 1892.
_Dr. Latimer_, 1893.
_Miss Archer Archer_, 1894.
_Sweet Clover, a Romance of the White City_, 1894
_The Wise Woman_, 1895.
_A Great Love_, 1898.
_A West Point Wooing and Other Stories_, 1899.
_Miss Pritchard’s Wedding Trip_, 1901.
_The Right Princess_, 1902.
_Jewel: a Chapter in Her Life_, 1903.
_Jewel’s Story Book_, 1904.
_The Opened Shutters_, 1906.
_The Leaven of Love_, 1908.
_Clever Betsy_, 1910.
_The Inner Flame_, 1912.
_The Right Track_, 1914.
_Instead of the Thorn_, 1916.
_Heart’s Haven_, 1918.
_All of Mrs. Burnham’s books are published by Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston._