EDNA FERBER
The most interesting thing about Edna Ferber is that she was born in
Kalamazoo. No, the most interesting thing is that she threw her first
novel in the wastebasket whence, like Kipling’s _Recessional_, it was
retrieved by another. No, no! the most interesting thing about Edna
Ferber is that she’s a superb short story writer, one of the best in
America, one of the dozen best.
You are all wrong. The supremely interesting fact about Edna Ferber is
this: She invented the Tired Business Woman.
When writing about Miss Ferber why be dull? Why go in for the higher
criticism? As for the lower criticism, we hope we are above it.
Certainly _she_ is.
To get back to name, dates, etc.: Chicago, Des Moines and Appleton,
Wisconsin, all have a stake in Miss Ferber’s success. Kalamazoo doesn’t
vociferate. It doesn’t have to, for she was born there and though seven
cities claimed Homer dead it will be no use for seven or eight or six
places to claim Edna Ferber living. Kalamazoo will see to that;
Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she made her debut--the only debut that’s
really worth making--on August 15, 1887. That is why we shall speak of
her very respectfully. She is a month older than we are and a month is
everything.
The daughter of Jacob Charles Ferber and Julia (Neuman) Ferber. Educated
in the public and high schools of--alas for Kalamazoo!--Appleton,
Wisconsin. At seventeen she became a reporter on the Appleton _Daily
Crescent_--“the youngest real reporter in the world.” She has it on us.
We were almost nineteen when--but never mind. Appleton, we hear, soon
became too small for Miss Ferber. Appletons have a way of doing that, or
isn’t it rather that the Edna Ferbers have a way of growing too big for
the Appletons? Anyway, Miss Ferber went to Milwaukee and then to a big
Chicago daily, the _Tribune_, to be exact. In Milwaukee she worked on
the _Journal_. _Dawn O’Hara_, her first book, was written in the time
she could spare from newspaper work. After it was completed she did not
like it. It was her mother who rescued the manuscript from the
wastebasket and sent it to a publisher, the same person mentioned in the
dedication of the novel: “To my dear mother who frequently interrupts
and to my sister Fannie who says ‘Sh-sh-sh!’ outside my door.”
The best piece of work Mrs. Ferber ever did! The book took publisher and
public by storm. It came out in 1911 and in the same year the new
American author attained the dignity of twenty-four years. Our copy of
_Dawn O’Hara_ is marked “eighth edition,” but as it is a reprinted copy
that may understate, or rather under-indicate, the book’s success. A few
thousands one way or another hardly matters among so many thousands of
copies sold!
Without pressing the autobiographical idea too hard it is perfectly
evident that much of the background of _Dawn O’Hara_ is from Miss
Ferber’s own experience, notably the settings in Milwaukee. How she
could ever have been so dissatisfied with her story as to discard it
utterly any present-day reader will be puzzled to imagine. It is
extremely well told. It is full of the perfect human--humorously
human--quality which lifts so many of Miss Ferber’s short stories into
high place. Take this passage:
“The Whalens live just around the corner. The Whalens are omniscient.
They have a system of news gathering which would make the efforts of a
New York daily appear antiquated. They know that Jenny Laffin feeds the
family on soup meat and oatmeal when Mr. Laffin is on the road; they
know that Mrs. Pearson only shakes out her rugs once in four weeks; they
can tell you the number of times a week that Sam Dempster comes home
drunk; they know that the Merkles never have cream with their coffee
because little Lizzie Merkle goes to the creamery every day with just
one pail and three cents; they gloat over the knowledge that Professor
Grimes, who is a married man, is sweet on Gertie Ashe, who teaches
second reader in his school; they can tell you where Mrs. Black got her
seal coat, and her husband only earning two thousand a year; they know
who is going to run for mayor, and how long poor Angela Sims has to
live, and what Guy Donnelly said to Min when he asked her to marry him.
“The three Whalens--mother and daughters--hunt in a group. They send
meaning glances to one another across the room, and at parties they get
together and exchange bulletins in a corner. On passing the Whalen house
one is uncomfortably aware of shadowy forms lurking in the windows, and
of parlor curtains that are agitated for no apparent cause.”
Beautiful! Gardiner of Harvard could have turned it inside out for you
and have shown you just where Miss Ferber impinged on your sensations
and how and to what end.... But the thing shows the facility of her best
work. Are the Whalens important to the story of _Dawn O’Hara_? They are
not. They are merely figures on the canvas, amusing but unimportant
people, no more than “brushed in” but brushed in with a firmness of
touch, a fidelity of detail, a humorous artist eye that is, as we say,
“taking” or “fetching” and wholly delightful.
Since 1911 with short stories and a book a year there is nothing to
chronicle but a progressive and uninterrupted success. Nothing except
the Tired Business Woman. Make no mistake; this creation of Miss
Ferber’s is _not_ a feminine counterpart of the Tired Business Man. The
T. B. W. does not go to musical shows and sit in the front rows. She
does not telephone home to the husband that she is sorry but important
business will detain her downtown this evening. She does not bring home
old friends unexpectedly to dinner, or worse, _not_ bring them home to
dinner. She is man-less but not because she need be. She is unmarried or
a widow. She has a boy, like Jock McChesney, and finds the task of
making a man of him, in outside hours not devoted to earning their
living, a woman-sized job! Give Edna Ferber credit for this, that she
has done as much as the cleverest feminist to make the world see the
self-reliant woman as she is, and not as the world deduces she may be. A
woman, yes, and a mother, yes! But a regular person above everything
else. Read, or re-read, _Emma McChesney & Co._ with this in a corner of
your mind and you will be thankful to Miss Ferber when you have
finished. Some thanks, too, may go to Ethel Barrymore, whose
impersonation of the Tired But Admired (and admirable) Business Woman of
Miss Ferber’s fiction reënforced the lesson of the book with the ocular
demonstration of the play.
Miss Ferber is going forward. The evidence of it will be found in the
stories contained in her latest book, _Cheerful--By Request_ (1918) and
perhaps particularly in the story in that volume called _The Gay Old
Dog_. At thirty-one she has her best years--as literary records
go--before her. No painstaking appraisal of her work would be wise at
this time. In the next two or three years she may overshadow everything
she has done so far. We hope so. Because then, bearing in mind that
month’s initial difference, we shall have high hopes ourselves!
BOOKS BY EDNA FERBER
_Dawn O’Hara_, 1911.
_Buttered Side Down_, 1912.
_Roast Beef Medium_, 1913.
_Personality Plus_, 1914.
_Emma McChesney & Co._, 1915.
_Fanny Herself_, 1917.
_Cheerful--By Request_, 1918.
_Half Portions_, 1920.
_$1200 a Year_, 1920.
_The Girls_, 1921.
_Gigolo_, 1922.
_First six books published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York; the
others by Doubleday, Page & Company, New York._