A long list of works Gertrude Atherton has to her credit as a writer.
She is indisputably a woman of genius. Not that her genius is
distinctively feminine, though she is in matters historical a
passionate partisan. Most of the critics who approve her work agree
that in the main she views life with somewhat of the masculine spirit
of liberality. She is as much the realist as one can be who is
saturated with the romance that is California, her birthplace and her
home, if such a true cosmopolite as she can be said to have a home. In
all she has written there is abounding life; her grasp of character is
firm; her style has a warm, glowing plasticity, frequently a rhythm
variously expressive of all the wide range of feeling which a writer
must have to make his or her books living things. She does no less
well in the depiction of men than in the portraiture of women. All
stand out of their vivid environment distinctly and they are all
personalities of power--even, occasionally, of "that strong power
called weakness." And they all wear something of a glory imparted to
them by the sympathy of their creator and interpreter. High upon any
roster of our best American writers we must enroll the name of Mrs.
Atherton.
Of all her books I like best this "Rezanov," though I have not found
many to agree with me. It is not so pretentious as others more
frequently commended. It is a simple story, almost one might say an
incident or an anecdote. It is not literally sophisticated. For me
that is its unfailing charm. I find in it not a little of the strange,
primeval quality that makes me think of "Aucassin and Nicolette." For
it is not so much a novel as an historical idyl, not to be read without
a persisting suffusion of sympathy and never to be remembered without a
recurring tenderness. Remembered, did I say? It is unforgettable.
There are few books of American origin that resist so well the passing
of the years, that take on more steadily the glamour of "the
unimaginable touch of time." "Rezanov" is a classic, or I miss my
guess. This, though it was first published so recently as 1906.
The story has the merit of being, to some extent historically, and
wholly artistically, true. For the matter-of-facts Mrs. Atherton
provides a bibliography of her authorities. Those authorities I have
not read, nor should others. Sufficient unto me is the authority of
the novel itself splendidly demonstrated and established in the high
court of the reader's head and heart by the author's visualizing
veritism. Not twenty pages have you turned before you know this
Rezanov, privy councilor, grand chamberlain, plenipotentiary of the
Russo-American company, imperial inspector of the extreme eastern and
northwestern dominions of his imperial majesty Alexander the First,
emperor of Russia--all this and more, a man. He comes out of mystery
into the softly bright light of California, in strength and shrewdness
and dignity and personal splendor. And there is amidst it all a pathos
upon him. He commands your affection even while suggesting a doubt
whether the man may not be overwhelmed in the diplomat, the intriguer.
The year is 1806. The monstrous apparition of Napoleon has loomed an
omen of the doom of ancient authority and the shattering of nations in
Europe. That faithless, incalculable idealist Alexander, plans he knows
not what of imperial glory in the Eastern and Western world. Rezanov
is his servant, a man of ambition, perhaps in all favor at court,
desirous of doing some great service for his master. He dreams of
dominion in this sun-soaked land so lazily held in the lax grasp of
Spain. He has come from failure. He had been to Japan with presents
to the emperor, was received by minor officials with a hospitality that
poorly concealed the fact that he was virtually a prisoner, and then
dismissed without admission to the audience he sought with the mikado.
He had gone then to bleak, inhospitable Sitka, to find the settlement
there in a plague of scurvy and starvation only slightly mitigated by
vodka. Down the coast then he sailed to the Spanish settlement for
food for the settlement. He comes to that place where in his vision he
sees arise that city of the future which we know now as San Francisco.
Masterful man that he is, he feels that here some great thing awaits
him. The Spaniards are wary of him. They will not trade with him, but
they receive him courteously and they are fascinated by his
self-possessed, well-poised but withal so gracious personality. The
life there at the time is a sort of lotus-eating existence. It is a
piece of Spain translated to a more luscious, a lovelier land,
overlooking beautiful seas and perilous. Into the dolce far niente
Rezanov enters with some surrender to its softening spell, but with the
courtier's prudence.
And he meets the girl, Concha Arguello. He sees her in the setting of
burning and sweet Castilian roses--a girl who has had the benefit of
education, who keeps the graces of old Madrid in this realm beyond sea,
a burgeoning bud of womanhood, daughter of the commandante. The doom
of both is upon them at once. They have drunk the poisoned cup.
Rezanov resists the first approaches of the delightful delirium,
remembering Russia, his duty, his ambition, the poor starving men of
the Sitka factory. At a party he dances with Concha and they both know
that for each there is none other. So in that setting so wild, so
strange, so remote, so lovely for the old world grace that is made
native there by this bright, deep, fond girl, the high gods proceed to
have their will upon the two. The little community life pulses around
them the faster because they are there. Their love becomes a motive in
the diplomatic drama which has for end, first, the securing of food for
those famishing folk at Sitka, and beyond that, possibly the seizing of
the region for Russia, lest that new young power of the West, the
United States, preempt the rich domain. Concha would help the Russian
to those ends immediate which he reveals to her, and succeeds. He
tells her of Russia and his mighty position there. He would have her
for his wife, his helper in the vast imperial affairs at the Russian
capitol, his princess in his palace, augmenting his official and
personal distinction. She shares his vision, rising to all the heights
it unfolds in a splendid future. Child she is, but she is transformed
into a woman by the prospect not of her own pleasure, but of
participation in splendid achievement with this man so keen, so supple,
yet so firm in high purpose. And as the prospect opens to her desire
and his there looms the obstacle. They cannot marry, for Rezanov is a
heretic. And now the passion flames. This child woman will go with
him. Ah, but the church, the king of Spain, will they permit? And the
Czar! Rezanov will see to it that the Czar will clear the way for them
through power exercised at Rome and at Madrid. Conditioned upon this,
the girl's parents consent.
These lovers prate very little of love. Their desire runs too deep for
mere speech. It is a desire made up of as much spiritual as carnal
fire. It is fierce but steady in ecstacy and agony, indistinguishable
the one from the other. Rezanov, man of the great world, it purifies.
Concha it strengthens and makes indomitable. They will abide delay.
They will endure in faith and hope--the faith and hope both dimmed by
the vague and unshakable intuition or premonition that fate has marked
them for derision. Nevertheless, they will endure.
There is a meeting on a path that overlooks where the white seas strike
their tents. It is a meeting of little action, of few words. It is
tense with the almost inexpressible, but at its end, confronting the
doubtful future, realizing that when Rezanov goes he may not return,
this girl tells him: "I will give myself to you forever, how much or
little that may mean here on earth. Forever!" And then that scene in
the moonlight amid the scent of the Castilian roses, when Concha, as
signal of her trust in her lover, lifts the little wisps of hair that
conceal her ears and shows them to him--it throbs with passionate
purity in memory yet.
Rezanov sails away to Sitka with provisions, thence to Siberia, and
then begins the long ride over endless versts of land, across streams
in icy flood, in rain and cold and snow towards the capitol and the
Czar. Delays, disasters to vehicles and horses and the maddening
lengthening of time. From drenchings and freezing comes the fever that
calls for more speed. Krasnoiarsk is reached. The fever mounts, the
traveler must stop and rest and be cared for. His visions commingle
his objective and his memories ... CONCHA! ... The snowy steppes and
the inky rivers.... His servant enters the room in the inn ... Why
... "Where has Jon found Castilian roses in this barren land?" ... "and
his unconquerably sanguine spirit flared high before a vision of
eternal and unthinkable happiness" ... Castilian roses! Concha
Arguello waits among them, immortal, sainted in her purity and
fidelity, ministering to her poor Indians, her face alight with
unquenchable memory and with surety of an eventual everlasting tryst.
Those Castilian roses! They perfume forever one's memories of this
pair, puissant in faith, in this novel that is a poem and a shrine of
that love which lives when death itself is dead.