ZONA GALE
My dear Mr. Overton:--
“The first story which I ever wrote was printed. I printed it myself, in
pencil, for it was before I could write. And the story appeared in a
book. I made the book, of manilla paper, bound with ribbon. The story
began: ‘The sun was just sinking behind the western hills when three
travelers appeared. One was tall and one was short and one was
middle-sized.’ And when the heroine arrived and one of these travelers
asked her to marry him, I remember pressing my mother to tell me how to
spell ‘N--yes’, which constituted the maid’s reply.
“At about the same time I wrote a volume of verse in a blank book. One
selection was this:
When I am a lady, a lady
I will be a milliner if I can.
I’ll have pretty flowers and bonnets and hats
And in my store there shall be no mice and rats,
When I am a lady.
“When I was thirteen I wrote a novel, which almost simultaneously came
back to me from a publisher. It was called _A White Dove_, but I do not
know what it was about. A few years later I wrote another novel,
_Vedita_, of tremendous length--this is easy to remember because of the
cost of the type-writing. It was submitted to a Chicago newspaper which
was offering a prize for a serial. From that manuscript, which was
readily returned, I saved alive the character of Nichola, an old Italian
servant, whom I later used in _The Loves of Pelleas and Ettarre_.
“A short story I first submitted at sixteen--it was called _Both_, was
three thousand words long, and I was paid Three Dollars for it by the
Milwaukee _Evening Wisconsin_. I had just entered the University at
Madison, forty miles from my home, but I traveled the forty miles and
came home to show the check, and went back in two hours. Excepting in
the Milwaukee and Madison and Wisconsin University newspapers, and one
or two evanescent magazines, I never had a story accepted until 1903,
though for ten years previous to that acceptance, by _Success Magazine_,
I had constantly submitted stories. In 1911 the _Delineator_ gave me a
first prize of $2,000 for a short story, _The Ancient Dawn_. In 1904 I
began writing stories about Pelleas and Ettarre, two old lovers, and
forty of these were published in a dozen magazines, and half were
collected in a volume published by the Macmillan Company. These were
followed by _Friendship Village_ stories. The first editor to whom these
stories were submitted declined them with the word that his acquaintance
with small towns was wide but that he had never seen any such people as
these. About sixty of these stories have been published serially, the
majority of them now collected in four volumes, but I am still not sure
that the first editor was not right.
“After graduating from Wisconsin University, about six years were spent
in newspaper work, in Milwaukee and New York, and in magazine work in
New York--and in that time a master’s degree was given by Wisconsin
University for work done in absentia, but neither degree, in itself, has
ever meant anything to me, though of course that part of the work which
I liked and wanted was invaluable.... I began newspaper work on the
Milwaukee _Evening Wisconsin_ which accepted that first story of mine,
and I secured a position by attrition. I presented myself every morning
at the desk of the city editor to ask for an assignment, but the chief
thing that I can recall about those mornings was the intense wish that
the elevator which was taking me up to the city room would turn out to
be the elevator taking me down again. At the end of two weeks the city
editor let me write about a flower show. I have never put such emotion
into anything else that I have written. I was another month in getting
on the staff. In New York the process was different. After being refused
by nearly every paper there, I went back to the New York _World_, and by
the office boy every morning I sent in a list of suggestions, made from
that day’s news, on which I thought I could write; and the city editor
checked those that I might try. After a good many weeks I went on the
staff of the _World_.
“And all of this was so largely sheer adventure and pioneering that none
of it now seems to me to have been either will or purpose, but pure
delight. But at the time I was under the illusion that I was very
determined.
“For the last few years I have lived here with my father and mother, in
the little town where I was born and where they have spent most of their
lives. My mother’s family, named Beers, is English; and my father’s
family, English, of Scotch-Irish descent, settled in Watertown,
Massachusetts, in 1640, nine generations ago. My
great-great-grandfather, Captain Henry Gale, led his company against the
courthouse at Worcester, where the supreme court was sitting, and
demanded the repeal of the imprisonment-for-debt law, just after the
Revolution; and for this he was condemned to death, and then reprieved,
and removed to Vermont.... Here in Portage, in my father’s house, a
little river runs close by the door, and there are lilacs on the bank
and hills to the south, and there are many wild birds, and squirrels
live in trees close to the windows. It is true that people love to try
to make their own surroundings sound romantic and unique, and hereby, to
my own taste, I do so. Here I have written ten books of fiction, two
published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company and all the rest by the Macmillan
Company; and a little play, _Neighbors_, published by Huebsch.
“I have had some years of that passion for reform. I was president of a
civic association here, then chairman of the State Federation’s civic
work, then of the national civic work of the General Federation of
Woman’s Clubs, and on the board of the American Civic association. I
have resigned from everything in favor of the new democracy.... My only
executive connection with any organization is with the board of the
American Union Against Militarism. I have been a believer in equal
suffrage since before it was respectable to believe. My paramount taste
is for poetry. At the moment my chief admiration is for Russia. My
deepest interest is to find those who feel something of the fundamental
truth underlying all religion. And my recreation is talk with those who
believe with passion in the new industrial and social and spiritual
To-morrow.
“ZONA GALE.”
“Portage, Wisconsin.
“February, 1919.”
Characteristically, Miss Gale says nothing, in her reply to a request
for information about herself, concerning her novel, _Birth_, the book
which has not only made absolutely necessary her inclusion in any record
of American women novelists, but has placed her in the front rank. For
however we may array the women writers of the United States, no one who
has read _Birth_ is likely to deny that it possesses some of the
attributes of greatness and literary permanence or that it has “its
share of the qualities which lift writing out of time.”
Pressed to say what is in her heart, Miss Gale will tell you that, “as a
matter of fact, _Birth_ is really my first novel. Since the most
fantastic book with which I began, I have never done anything of novel
length. All my other books have been short stories threaded together,
save three stories of 30,000 words published separately, in no sense
novels. After writing ten books, this book is really my first try at a
novel.... It is embarrassing to be caught looking in a mirror--or
saying one’s own name aloud over the telephone. But to try to do both,
in print, seems to underscore all one’s lacks.” A very modest person,
you see. The author of this book is aware of a certain injustice arising
from his inclusion of a number of letters. The risk is clear. He begs to
say, here and now, that he assumes that risk; and he had rather take the
chance that readers may suspect some of his subjects of
self-consciousness than encounter the certainty that they will think
these authors hardly human--names on title-pages merely.
When _Birth_ appeared some people were bewildered. One reviewer asked
pathetically what had become of the Zona Gale of _Friendship Village_.
But those whose saturation-point for sentimentality is decidedly, and,
as we believe, healthfully low, gave a great shout of satisfaction to
which added sounds of admiration formed a contrapuntal bass. For _Birth_
is a thing Thomas Hardy would not be ashamed to put his name to. Nor, we
suspect, George Meredith, either. We like to think that were George
Eliot living to-day, and mistress of the art of fiction (which, bless
her, she never was) she would have written such a book.
The fact that at this writing _Birth_ has not been “discovered” by the
large public which such a book ultimately commands is of little
importance. That will come. The failure of many book reviewers and book
reporters to detect and proclaim its distinction is an indictment of
book “reviewing” more specific and damning than any generality in which
we might indulge. The real elements of the book’s excellence may best be
recorded in the words of a daughter of Henry Mills Alden, Constance
Murray Greene, who said (_Books and the Book World_ of _The Sun_, New
York, November 24, 1918):
“The charm consists in delightful and continuous humor, often sharp and
never overkind, which isn’t at all what people mean by ‘charming’ in the
new and popular sense. But here is the real substance of things more to
be desired than the fine gold of sunshine. Miss Gale is incurably funny
and we love her for it--witness the delivery horse, ‘hanging out its
tongue, not at all because of fast driving but from preference,’ and
Mis’ Henry Bates, whose stomach wouldn’t allow her to drink coffee. ‘She
always spoke’ (to quote directly) ‘as if her stomach stood back of her
chair.’ ... _Birth_ achieves the rare result of being both mystical and
colloquial.” How?
You may well ask. The setting is a tiny Wisconsin town, except for some
scenes in Chicago. The “hero” is a traveling salesman handling pickle
and fruit products; insignificant; with long, thin, freckled wrists and
a coat that gave the effect of blowing when there was no wind; with no
graces. You sicken over the little man’s humiliations in such social
life as Burage, Wisconsin, boasted. He marries a girl of the village, a
girl of some social gifts and quite ordinary and silly feminine
ambitions--and becomes a paperhanger, though knowing nothing of the
business. Barbara Pitt, Marshall Pitt’s wife, is dropped abruptly from
the story--daring technique but justified in the result--and the novel
develops as a narrative of the life-relation of father and son. This
little man, this Marshall Pitt, being human, had his immortal moments.
Zona Gale can put them on paper:
“It was in this manner that their child was born. There he was,
sentient. A rift in experience, the crossing of the street by Barbara at
one moment rather than the next; the opening of a gate by Pitt in the
afternoon instead of the morning. Then joy, ill, the depths, madness,
flowing about the two. These passed but there remained the
child--living, exquisite, sturdy, sensitive, a new microcosm,
experiencing within himself the act of God.”
Prose? Poetry! Deep and vibrant music. It has the austere beauty and the
imaginative content of Johann Sebastian Bach--say the _Chaconne_ in D
minor.
“Love is a creative force,” says Mrs. Greene in the article we have
already quoted, “and though Marshall Pitt had been unable through the
inarticulate material in which his soul was embodied to fashion himself
in any accordance with his blurred hopes, he could by virtue of his
great love for Barbara and their child offer to Jeffrey [his son] the
inspiration lacking which his life, even to his last heroic act, had
seemed a futile thing. In dying because he lacked cleverness to see the
means of escape, to save the only living thing that had loved him in
return, he made his last awkward gesture that of rescuing a dog!” We may
quote the passage, condensed slightly:
“They carried Pitt, and in his arms was a white Marseilles spread in
which he had swathed the little dog. The spread was burning, Pitt’s hair
was burning and the thin cotton of his shirt was all burned away about
his throat and breast and blazed upon his shoulders.
“They laid him on the ground and the people beat out the flames. As the
fire was quenched there was a terrific commotion in the white
Marseilles spread. Out leaped Jep, not a silken hair on him singed, and
he snapped indignantly at having been caused intolerable
inconvenience....
“‘Well, but of all the fool things. For a _dog_.’...”
BOOKS BY ZONA GALE
_Romance Island_, 1906.
_The Loves of Pelleas and Ettarre_, 1907.
_Friendship Village_, 1908.
_Friendship Village Love Stories_, 1909.
_Mothers to Men_, 1911.
_Christmas_, 1912.
_When I Was a Little Girl_, 1913.
_Neighborhood Stories_, 1914.
_Heart’s Kindred_, 1915.
_A Daughter of Tomorrow_, 1917.
_Birth_, 1918.
_Peace in Friendship Village_, 1919.
_Miss Lulu Bett_, 1920.
_Neighbors_ (play), 1920.
_Miss Lulu Bett_ (play), 1921.
_First two books published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis;
Neighbors first published by B. W. Huebsch, New York; Miss Lulu Bett,
novel and play, published by D. Appleton & Company, New York. Other
books published by the Macmillan Company, New York._