The greatest master of the short story our country has known found his
inspiration and produced his best work in California. It is now nearly
forty years since "The Luck of Roaring Camp" appeared, and a line of
successors, more or less worthy, have been following along the
trail blazed by Bret Harte. They have given us matter of many kinds,
realistic, romantic, tragic, humorous, weird. In this mass of material
much that was good has been lost. The columns of newspapers swallowed
some; weeklies, that lived for a brief day, carried others to the grave
with them. Now and then chance or design interposed, and some fragment
of value was not allowed to perish. It is matter for congratulation that
the story in this volume was one of those saved from oblivion.
In 1871 a San Francisco paper published a tale entitled The Case of
Summerfield. The author concealed himself under the name of "Caxton," a
pseudonym unknown at the time. The story made an immediate impression,
and the remote little world by the Golden Gate was shaken into startled
and enquiring astonishment. Wherever people met, The Case of Summerfield
was on men's tongues. Was Caxton's contention possible? Was it true
that, by the use of potassium, water could be set on fire, and that
any one possessing this baneful secret could destroy the world? The
plausibility with which the idea was presented, the bare directness
of the style, added to its convincing power. It sounded too real to be
invention, was told with too frank a simplicity to be all imagination.
People could not decide where truth and fiction blended, and the name of
Caxton leaped into local fame.
The author of the tale was a lawyer, W. H. Rhodes, a man of standing and
ability, interested in scientific research. He had written little; what
time he had been able to spare from his work, had been given to studies
in chemistry whence he had drawn the inspiration for such stories as The
Case of Summerfield. With him the writing of fiction was a pastime, not
a profession. He wrote because he wanted to, from the urgence of an idea
pressing for utterance, not from the more imperious necessity of keeping
the pot boiling and of there being a roof against the rain. Literary
creation was to him a rest, a matter of holiday in the daily round of a
man's labor to provide for his own.
His output was small. One slender volume contains all he wrote: a few
poems, half a dozen stories. In all of these we can feel the spell
exercised over him by the uncanny, the terrible, the weirdly grotesque.
His imagination played round those subjects of fantastic horror which
had so potent an attraction for Fitz James O'Brien, the writer whom he
most resembles. There was something of Poe's cold pleasure in
dissecting the abnormally horrible in "The Story of John Pollexfen,"
the photographer, who, in order to discover a certain kind of lens,
experimented with living eyes. His cat and dog each lost an eye, and
finally a young girl was found willing to sell one of hers that she
might have money to help her lover. But none of the other stories shows
the originality and impressively realistic tone which distinguish The
Case of Summerfield. In this he achieved the successful combination of
audacity of theme with a fitting incisiveness of style. It alone rises
above the level of the merely ingenious and clever; it alone of his work
was worth preserving.
Scattered through the ranks of writers, part of whose profession is a
continuous, unflagging output, are these "one story men," who, in some
propitious moment, when the powers of brain and heart are intensified by
a rare and happy alchemy, produce a single masterpiece. The vision
and the dream have once been theirs, and, though they may never again
return, the product of the glowing moment is ours to rejoice in and
wonder at. Unfortunately the value of these accidental triumphs is not
always seen. They go their way and are submerged in the flood of fiction
that the presses pour upon a defenseless country. Now and then one
unexpectedly hears of them, their unfamiliar titles rise to the surface
when writers gather round the table. An investigator in the forgotten
files of magazinedom has found one, and tells of his treasure trove as
the diver of his newly discovered pearl. Then comes a publisher, who,
diligent and patient, draws them from their hiding-places, shakes off
the dust, and gives them to a public which once applauded and has since
forgotten.
Such has been the fate of The Case of Summerfield. Thirty-five years
ago, in the town that clustered along the edge of San Francisco Bay, it
had its brief award of attention. But the San Francisco of that day
was very distant--a gleam on the horizon against the blue line of the
Pacific. It took a mighty impetus to carry its decisions and opinions
across the wall of the Sierra and over the desert to the East. Fame and
reputation, unless the greatest, had not vitality for so long a flight.
So the strange and fantastic story should come as a discovery, the one
remarkable achievement of an unknown author, who, unfortunately, is no
longer here to enjoy an Indian summer of popularity.
Geraldine Bonner.