MARY E. WALLER
There are two actresses who are never interviewed--Alla Nazimova and
Maude Adams. At least that was true some years ago; perhaps it is no
longer true of Nazimova. But did you ever see an interview with Maude
Adams? And yet, the interview is one of the most useful means of
securing that publicity an actress must have. Exceptions establish the
rule.
An author is not in precisely the same case with an actor, but personal
publicity, of an entirely honorable and legitimate sort, has served most
authors well. The truth is, the public has a certain right in the
personality of any one undertaking to serve or entertain the public; in
the words of statutes, a writer, like an actor, is, to a degree,
“charged with a public interest” and the day may come when writers, like
traction officials, will be subject to public inquiry. Perhaps Public
Service Commissions will regulate them....
Until that day we may never know anything about the personality of Mary
E. Waller, about the woman behind _The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_. For, in
the words of her publishers, “Miss Waller is singularly averse to
publicity. She has never permitted her portrait to be published.” As
for biographical data, meager is the word. Let us see just how scanty it
is.
We know that she was born in Boston and that she traveled and studied
abroad, taught in a private school in New York and later established and
maintained for five years a school for girls in Chicago. We know that
her family, for four generations, has been identified with the history
of Vermont, and that for many years, until she moved to her present home
on the island of Nantucket, Miss Waller spent the greater part of her
time with her mother in the Vermont hills.
That is all any one has so far been authorized to say of the period
before Miss Waller’s success as an author.
In 1902 there was published in Boston a book called _Little Citizens_, a
story of New York street gamins. The following year saw the publication
of a story of family life in the Green Mountains. Of this second book by
Miss Waller, Margaret E. Sangster said, five years later (June 19, 1907)
in the _Christian Herald_:
“I read the other day the most suggestive book that has appeared since
Miss Alcott published _Little Women_. The title of the book, _A Daughter
of the Rich_, by M. E. Waller, fails to convey an idea of the striking
qualities of a most fascinating story. The scenes and background of the
story are in a mountain fastness of New Hampshire, in a home where
parents of culture and piety, encumbered by poverty, are successfully
bringing up a household of delightful boys and girls. A city physician
persuades the father of an only daughter to send his delicate darling
out of the enervating atmosphere of a millionaire’s home that is
motherless, into the sweetness and mother-brooding environment of the
home on the mountainside. The little girl is introduced to strangers,
who at once become her friends, and in the novel situation, without a
single luxury, but in much homely comfort, she gains the health and
strength that wealth could not give her.
“I have it in my heart to wish that this book might have the vogue that
_Little Women_ had. The simple, beautiful story is worth a thousand
sermons and treatises on the best way of rearing and training a family.”
The _Christian Herald_ enters many homes and Margaret E. Sangster was
read by many thousands. There is no way of measuring the direct and
indirect influence of such praise as she uttered. It is very great. But
this was in 1907. The year following the appearance of _A daughter of
the Rich_, Miss Waller’s third book, _The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_, came
along.
Books have curious fates. Gene Stratton-Porter’s _Freckles_ took three
years to find its audience. A fine novel by St. John G. Ervine,
_Changing Winds_, was published, had the expected sale and died;
remained dead for about a year and then suddenly began selling again! In
the case of a textbook such a phenomenon can always be traced to some
simple explanation. For example, W. J. Henderson wrote a condensed
treatise called _Elements of Navigation_ which sold desultorily for
years, the sales slowly declining. Came the Great War. The United States
undertook to create a merchant marine. Thousands of men had to be
trained to navigate merchant ships. Mr. Henderson’s book sold like hot
cakes, was reprinted; was revised and pretty well rewritten; sold faster
than fiction!
In the case of a novel a “resurrection” is seldom quite explicable. It
is matter for conjecture what “brought back” _Changing Winds_. Now _The
Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_ was not a book that rose from the dead, but a
book that almost never lived; that is to say, it was six months before
it achieved popular success. Once “alive” it has ever since remained so.
Seven years after publication the _twenty-eighth_ edition was published.
It is unnecessary to say more.
The catalogue of the American Library Association, a conscientious
publication if ever there was one, describes this book concisely: “Scene
in the Green Mountains. An ambitious farmer crippled in early manhood
finds interests in the outside world through a chance acquaintance and
becomes a wood-carver of renown.” There you are; see what
conscientiousness can accomplish! All the charm, all the wistfulness,
all the magic of hope and aspiration, and the triumph of achievement,
which make this novel the beloved tale it is--stripped away! “An
ambitious farmer crippled in early manhood....” The librarians are not
to blame, either. It is their business to outline concisely.... Whereas
fiction is no matter of outlines but, like life, a thing of coloring,
perspective, the glint of an eye, the shadowed corner of a smiling
mouth. Fiction cannot be done in black and white; those who, under the
label of “realism,” essay the task, invariably fail.
But we were to enumerate what is known of Miss Waller. Well, in 1913,
after she had been besieged for nine years for her picture, a visitor to
Nantucket, whither the author had gone to live, did succeed in seeing
her and talking with her. He did not get a photograph of her (in the
fall of 1912 a photographer went expressly to Nantucket and lay long in
wait for a snapshot, coming away without a single exposure). But at
least the visitor did see and converse with Miss Waller. How came this
miracle about?
There had never been a hospital on Nantucket, in spite of the shipwrecks
and succorings of two centuries. Certain residents decided it was time
one was built. A board of trustees was formed and a house purchased.
Money for maintenance was needed. So they built an enormous thermometer
on the main street, under overarching elms. When the visitor came to
trail Miss Waller he found the temperature about $6,800, which included
royalties from one of Miss Waller’s books.
The hospital cottage was not new--but very solid. The visitor reflected
that amid all this white paneling of the eighteenth century and mission
oak of the nineteenth, other visitors would doubtless soon be drinking
tea and paying the cost of absorbent cotton and iron bedsteads.
Meanwhile he was sufficiently grateful to be allowed to visit another
house and find himself seated opposite Miss Waller. She occupied a
chintz-covered chair halfway between a flashing grate fire and a row of
windows. Mahogany and the implements of authorship were all about. The
mahogany was exceptionally fine. Through the windows, marine views and
glimpses of moorland--or what they’d call moorland in an English novel.
Talk. About the hospital. Nothing about Miss Waller. Nothing about her
work. Nothing about her plans. Yes, she lived on Nantucket the year
round. Illness in the family kept her closely at home.... Beyond
question, there _is_ a Mary E. Waller. She is not mythical. Though she
may some day be a cause of controversy. Let it therefore be set down
that Shakespeare, not Bacon, wrote _Hamlet_; Mary E. Waller, not Clara
Louise Burnham, wrote _The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_.
And that is all. No more exists. We may say a word or two about Miss
Waller’s books since her big success. It will have to be inadequate and
sketchy. _A Daughter of the Rich_ is technically described as “for girls
of 10 and upward.” _Sanna of the Island Town_ is a series of pen
pictures of incidents in the ordinary life of an island
village--Nantucket is the original. _Through the Gates of the
Netherlands_ is the “pleasant narrative of the six months’ experience in
Holland of an American architect and his wife who saw the country, its
art and its people intimately and intelligently.” We quote again from
the American Library Association’s catalogue. In epitomizing this sort
of volume (travel-educational-gift book) see how excellent the outline
method is!
Edwin Markham liked _Our Benny_, saying: “It is fluent and simple and
full of a homely pathos and humor, and it takes a place next below
_Snowbound_ and _Myles Standish_.” Caution! _Our Benny_ is a narrative
poem; there are those who can’t endure verse. They may pass on to
_Flamsted Quarries_. This opens in New York City. A fatherly priest sees
a child on the vaudeville stage and takes her to an asylum for homeless
children. Later we find them in a small Maine village, a quarry town.
There is an embezzler in the story and the theme is the power of a
simple environment, good, hard work and honest love to make men and
women whole.
_My Ragpicker_ is about Nanette, an appealing little child of poverty in
Paris. _A Cry in the Wilderness_ has American and Canadian characters
and its scenes are laid mainly in New York and in a seigneury on the St.
Lawrence--Miss Waller’s first invasion of Canada. _Aunt Dorcas’s Change
of Heart_ was published by Miss Waller herself, in 1913; doubtless it
was an enterprise in behalf of that hospital which she thrust between
herself and her visitor. _From an Island Outpost_ is a meditative
book--thoughts that came to Miss Waller as she wrote from her own island
outpost on Nantucket. _Out of the Silences_ is a return to Canada and a
novel of the Great War. The setting is just over the border from Dakota.
The central character, Bob Collamore, an American boy, is left as a
youngster of nine in charge of William Plunket, a saddle-maker, quaintly
philosophical, broad-minded, sympathetic, with a considerable knowledge
of the human heart. The boy Bob grows up with Plunket’s stepson,
McGillie, and the children of the Cree Indian tribe. He gets a good deal
of the red man’s knowledge. As he matures the white man’s ambition to
get out in the world and match his wits against his fellows seizes him.
He goes forth confidently, to find that his youthful years have fixed
indelibly his ideals, his philosophy and his outlook on life. Love,
romance and success come to him--and death. For the war calls to his
manhood and takes him to France.
An intermediate book may be briefly mentioned. _A Year Out of Life_ is
only partly a work of fiction; in part it records Miss Waller’s
impressions of German life--long before the war, of course, for it was
published in 1909.
BOOKS BY MARY E. WALLER
_Little Citizens_, 1902.
_A Daughter of the Rich_, 1903.
_The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_, 1904.
_Sanna of the Island Town_, 1905.
_Through the Gates of the Netherlands_, 1906.
_A Year Out of Life_, 1909.
_Our Benny_, 1909.
_Flamsted Quarries_, 1910.
_My Ragpicker_, 1911.
_A Cry in the Wilderness_, 1912.
_Aunt Dorcas’s Change of Heart_, 1913.
_From an Island Outpost_, 1914.
_Out of the Silences_, 1918.
_Little Citizens was published by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company,
Boston; Aunt Dorcas’s Change of Heart was published by Miss Waller; all
Miss Waller’s other books are published by Little, Brown & Company,
Boston._