O 
 

H5iograpl)i0 of lUa&ing 
 
 Edited by W. P. TRENT 
 
 LEADING AMERICAN 
 NOVELISTS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ERSKINE, Ph.D. 
 
 Adjunct Professor of English in Columbia University 
 Author of " The Elizabethan Lyric " 
 
 WITH SIX PORTRAITS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1910 
 
Copyright, 1910 
 
 BY 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published March, IQIO 
 
PS 3-7 7 
 
 TO 
 
 MY FORMER COLLEAGUES 
 THE FACULTY OF AMHERST COLLEGE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IT is always a daring thing to name the leaders among 
 men of genius. No matter how wisely the choice is made, 
 there will be advocates of the rejected and assailants of the 
 elect. The present choice of the leading American novelists 
 is offered with a proper sense of critical frailty, but in the 
 belief that time has already sifted out these names for special 
 remembrance. The death of F. Marion Crawford, for 
 example, is so recent that it has not seemed wise here to 
 attempt either a biographical or a critical account of his 
 work. 
 
 In the critical portions of each biography I have at- 
 temped to make the novels more intelligible to the general 
 reader, who, I take for granted, will have made himself 
 familiar with the particular book under discussion. In so 
 far as each biography pronounces any final judgment on 
 the writer, I have tried to render the opinion of the best 
 critics of to-day, rather than my own impression. 
 
 For biographical matter I have availed myself of the 
 standard sources William Dunlap s life of Brockden 
 Brown, and Prescott s essay, founded on Dunlap; Professor 
 Thomas R. Lounsbury s life of Cooper in the American 
 Men of Letters Series, and the original prefaces to Cooper s 
 novels ; the life of Simms, in the American Men of Letters 
 Series, by Professor W. P. Trent; Professor G. E. Wood- 
 berry s life of Hawthorne in the same series, and Mr. 
 Henry James s life of Hawthorne in the English Men of 
 Letters Series ; N. Hawthorne; Sa Vie et Son CEuvre, par 
 L. Dhaleine; Mr. Julian Hawthorne s Nathaniel Haw- 
 
 vu 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 thorne and his Wife ; the Study of Hawthorne by George 
 Parsons Lathrop, and Mrs. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop s 
 Memories cf Hawthorne ; Horatio Bridge s Personal Recol 
 lections of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the introductions to the 
 various volumes of the Old Manse Edition of Hawthorne, 
 and J. T. Fields s Yesterdays with Authors, also Lind 
 say Swift s Book Farm, its Members, Scholars, and Visitors, 
 and the account of the Hawthorne Centenary Celebration 
 at the Wayside; the life of Mrs. Stowe by her son, the 
 Rev. Charles Edward Stowe ; the life of Bret Harte 
 by T. Edgar Pemberton, and the introductions to the 
 various volumes of the Standard Library Edition of 
 Bret Harte s works. The biography which Henry C. 
 Merwin is preparing for the American Men of Letters 
 Series will doubtless add much to our knowledge of Bret 
 Harte ; I wish I might have availed myself of it. I 
 am indebted to other books and to magazine articles 
 innumerable, but I must name two very different but 
 equally helpful works Mr. W. C. Brownell s American 
 Prose Masters, and Miss Lillie D. Loshe s Early American 
 Novel, which contains further bibliographical material. 
 
 It is a pleasure to record here my debt to my brother, 
 for assistance in preparing this book for the press. During 
 the writing of it I had a thousand occasions to thank the 
 librarians of Amherst College for unfailing cooperation. 
 And most of all I have reason to be grateful to my teacher, 
 and friend, and colleague, Professor W. P. Trent. 
 
 J.E. 
 
 Columbia University 
 February I, 1910 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 3 
 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 51 
 
 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 131 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 179 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 275 
 
 BRET HARTE 325 
 
PORTRAITS 
 
 FACING PAGB 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, frontispiece Title 
 
 CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 3 
 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 51 
 
 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 131 
 
 . . ,, . v ,, .... ; , , t< 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 275 
 
 BRET HARTE 3 2 S 
 
LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 
 
 THE American novel is usually supposed to begin with 
 Charles Brockden Brown. His individual though imma 
 ture genius connects the new literature with the fashions of 
 thought current in his time abroad, and his obvious inheri 
 tance from Godwin, the writers in the Gothic style, and the 
 revolutionary thinkers, accredits him with some importance 
 he might not otherwise have. But in his own right he laid 
 hold on fame through the dignity of his social and artistic 
 ideals; he has in spite of his priggishness and pedantry an 
 air of largeness ; his complete devotion to all causes of hu 
 manity and his interest in the mystery of the human spirit 
 fit him to introduce the novel of our democracy, in which 
 Cooper and Hawthorne and Mrs. Stowe have dignified with 
 their art man s great experiment in self-knowledge and lib 
 erty. 
 
 Brockden Brown has one other title to consideration in 
 the influence upon Hawthorne that has been claimed for him. 
 He was essentially a psychologist interested in moral prob 
 lems, and the total impression of his searchings into the 
 mystery of evil is not unlike the impression Hawthorne 
 makes. But the relation between them will perhaps always 
 seem to the lay mind hard to establish; for not only do they 
 differ widely in the technical equipment of their art and in 
 their acquaintance with life, but they also have little kinship 
 in their imaginative power. Hawthorne is among other things 
 a poet ; Brockden Brown belongs as much as he can to the 
 
 3 
 
LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 eighteenth century, the age of reason, and his dependence is 
 upon reason rather than upon imagination. Such a gen 
 eralization may be difficult to prove, but the element of 
 truth in it can be felt in reading almost any of his novels. 
 Hawthorne reminds us of that temper of the eighteenth 
 century we know in Addison and Irving; Brockden Brown 
 even at his best is related to Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 Brown s psychological, moral interests are supplemented 
 in his books by unusual realism; he can give the last touch 
 of life to the record of his actual observations or experiences, 
 as in his account of the plague in Arthur Mervyn. This 
 faculty also is of a kind with Franklin s clear-headed memory 
 of what he had seen; it has nothing in common with the 
 imaginative portrayal of scenes that never occurred; it is far 
 from the realism of either Hawthorne or Defoe. And in his 
 moral investigations Brockden Brown often illustrates the 
 disadvantages of detached reason as compared with imagina 
 tion in dealing with life; for him morality is standardized, 
 and all departures from the normal have a kind of pathologi 
 cal interest. For this reason what he observed had a ten 
 dency to fall into preconceived relations; his reasoning some 
 times prevented him from seeing true. The truest thing -in 
 the Scarlet Letter, the faith of Hester and Dimmesdale that 
 their love was holy, would no more have appeared true to 
 Brockden Brown than it would to Dr. Johnson. We can hear 
 him pronounce, "But, Sir, they knew it was sin, and that s 
 an end of it!" Though he was the pupil of Godwin and 
 wrote in the age of Shelley, Brockden Brown had the moral 
 conservatism of the new world. 
 
 A very slight glance at his work is enough to show that 
 he is hardly typical of American literature. He would be 
 a solitary figure in it, if he were not so largely a forgotten 
 one. He is known chiefly to scholars. But no account of 
 the American novel can neglect him, and even a passing 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 5 
 
 glance at the development of American thought, if it missed 
 him, would miss much. 
 
 II 
 
 Brockden Brown has derived more than his portion of 
 oblivion from his authoritative biographer, Dunlap, who 
 passed lightly over the human side of his subject, if he was 
 acquainted with it, and laid stress upon Brown s moral and 
 intellectual virtues, until the author is invested with that 
 special kind of priggishness that the world is most willing 
 to let die. "His parents," says Dunlap, "were virtuous, 
 religious people, and as such held a respectable rank in 
 society; and he could trace back a long line of ancestry hold 
 ing the same honorable station." More specific is the record 
 that Charles Brockden Brown, of Quaker descent, was born 
 in Philadelphia, January 17, 1771. 
 
 The name of Brown is no longer distinctive, as Dunlap 
 wisely remarks, and he gives us no further comment on the 
 author s immediate parentage. The name of Brockden was 
 derived from an ancestor who, in the reign of Charles II, 
 had what is presumably the only adventure the family line 
 could boast; he overheard a plot against the King, and was 
 discovered by the conspirators, but escaped by pretending to 
 have been asleep. His danger was so great, however, that he 
 came to America and settled in the province of Philadelphia. 
 
 Somewhat like Hawthorne, Brockden Brown was trained 
 for his life-work by circumstances almost accidental of 
 childhood. His home seems to have been full of a kind of 
 silent culture; there were books and maps, and encourage 
 ment to use both, but apparently there was little society of 
 the sort a boy needs. Brown was a delicate child, and his 
 physical inactivity combined naturally with the atmosphere 
 of his home to make him what his parents thought, perhaps 
 justly, an infant prodigy. In his earliest childhood, when 
 
6 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 they wished to leave him at home, they would put him in the 
 charge, not of his nurse, but of a book, knowing that he would 
 still be reading when they returned. Later, when he came 
 home from school, he would be found in the parlor, "where, 
 having slipped off his shoes, he was mounted on a table and 
 deeply engaged in the consultation of a map suspended on 
 the side of the wall." This curiosity as to the boundaries 
 of nations was displayed chiefly at dinner-time. His proud 
 parents encouraged the nervous child in abnormal study; 
 his father would ask him to point out on the map places in 
 all parts of the world, which the boy would do with ease, 
 usually giving his father some account of the city or country. 
 In expression he was no less precocious. When he was ten 
 years old a visitor called him "boy." After the visitor s de 
 parture the offended child asked, " Why does he call me boy? 
 Does he not know it is neither size nor age but understand 
 ing that makes a man? I could ask him an hundred ques 
 tions, none of which he could answer." 
 
 As for amusement of any sort, the child seems to have had 
 none. When he was eleven years old he entered the school 
 of Robert Proud, then well known for his history of Penn 
 sylvania. This gentleman taught the boy Greek and Latin 
 and had reason to be proud of his pupil s skill. But, as the 
 biographer says, "What a pity it is that the application which 
 assimilates man most to the exalted idea which we form of 
 immortal perfection should so certainly tend to enfeeble his 
 body and shorten his mortal existence, while the brutalizing 
 occupations of continued and thought-expelling labor, give 
 firmness and vigor and duration to the frame of man." In 
 short, the boy s health was ruined, and even the enthusiastic 
 teacher of Latin and Greek advised that he should cease all 
 study for a time. This was in his sixteenth year. By that 
 time he had made versions of portions of the book of Job, 
 the Psalms, and Ossian; he also contemplated three epic 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 7 
 
 poems, on the discovery of America, on the conquest of 
 Peru, and on Cortez s expedition to Mexico. 
 
 Upon the supposed cessation of his studies he was sent 
 to take long walks in the country. His parents were perhaps 
 not convinced of his real need of relaxation; certainly their 
 provision for it was half-hearted. His walks were solitary, 
 for some unexplained reason, and as he was absent-minded, 
 he frequently forgot to come back, so absorbed was he in his 
 thoughts. This vagary, we are told, excited great uneasiness 
 in the different members of his family. He probably con 
 vinced his parents, as he convinced his biographer, that a 
 variety of intellectual excitement would be the equivalent of 
 relaxation. Accordingly he added stenography to his other 
 accomplishments, and began to study French. 
 
 Perhaps we should credit Brockden Brown with a fa; 
 more generous boyhood than is recorded of him. His affec 
 tion for his three older brothers, Joseph, Armit and James, 
 implies some early comradeship. He must have been an 
 idealist from the first; he never lost his high dreams of life. 
 Doubtless a man as attractive as he must have had a certain 
 charm as child and youth. The somber picture of his early 
 years is not his fault. If he had ever been visited by a ray 
 of humor, his biographer was not the man to notice it. But 
 it should further be remembered that Brockden Brown 
 grew up in troubled times, and a more than usual seriousness 
 enveloped his boyhood. His premature interest in the parlor 
 map may have been almost a natural thing in the years when 
 the Revolution in America and the war with France and 
 Spain abroad were altering England s holdings and making 
 that map obsolete. When he was protesting against being 
 called a boy by the visitor, Cornwallis was surrendering at 
 Yorktown. If his boyhood gave him no other wholly sane 
 and admirable training, it gave him patriotism and a sense 
 of the dignity of mankind which he never lost. 
 
8 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 III 
 
 When the time came to choose a profession, Brockden 
 Brown was apprenticed to a Philadelphia lawyer, Alexander 
 Wilcox. Probably his reason for undertaking this profes 
 sion was the opportunity it afforded for intellectual improve 
 ment; it is hard to believe that he ever cared for the prac 
 tical opportunities it gave him for advancement in public 
 life. His office duties left him sufficient time to cultivate 
 his gifts as he chose; otherwise he perhaps would have taken 
 the necessary time, for his zeal for literary improvement 
 seems to have been insatiable. He corresponded with a few 
 friends, chosen for their sympathies with his own interests, 
 and he kept a journal, wherein he entered his thoughts, exer 
 cised himself in composition, and even copied those letters 
 he received which seemed unusually well written. He also 
 attended carefully to his handwriting, a clear hand being, in 
 his opinion, a substantial aid to success in the law. Of one 
 of his correspondents, a youth named Davidson, he inquired 
 what were "the relations, dependence, and connection of the 
 several parts of knowledge," and as Davidson was appar 
 ently in no position to reply, he answered himself at some 
 length in his diary. Whatever amusement this ambitious 
 entry will occasion to the casual reader, at least it shows 
 the writer s conscientious groping in regions of thought most 
 often neglected by literary youth; it would indicate, if we 
 had no other means of knowing, that Brockden Brown by 
 nature was a philosopher perhaps far more that than 
 artist. At the same time the disproportion between the large 
 question and its answer indicates a characteristic lack of 
 thoroughness; the manner of his utterance is stately, but he 
 seems appallingly short of facts. From this cause his curious 
 and energetic mind, in most if not all of his writing, is un 
 convincing, and the result is more disastrous because he 
 depends, not upon emotion, but upon reason. 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 9 
 
 His first publication was in the Columbian Magazine, in 
 August, 1789, and for some time his contributions were of 
 the newspaper level of those days, interesting chiefly to his 
 friends. The first public attention he received was due to a 
 printer s blunder. He had composed a poetical address to 
 Franklin, and the printer for reasons unknown substituted 
 Washington s name throughout; "Washington," as the au 
 thor says, "therefore stands arrayed in awkward colours. 
 Philosophy smiles to behold her darling son; she turns in 
 horror and disgust from those who have won the laurel of 
 victory in the field of battle, to this her favourite candidate 
 who had never participated in such bloody glory, and whose 
 fame was derived from the conquest of philosophy alone. 
 The printer by his blundering ingenuity made the subject 
 ridiculous. Every word of this clumsy panegyric was a direct 
 slander upon Washington, and so it was regarded at the 
 time." 
 
 Some of Brown s friends formed a debating society, in 
 which legal cases were considered and decisions pronounced. 
 In this club Brown distinguished himself by his powers of 
 expression and by the judicial manner which he learned to 
 assume, but there is no record that he showed special ac 
 quaintance with law. In another organization, a Belles- 
 Lettres Club, founded by that friend Davidson who failed 
 to settle the several branches of knowledge, Brockden Brown 
 was a more important figure apparently the leader. At the 
 first meeting of this literary society he was chosen to read a 
 paper defining its aims. In spite of his stilted style the reader 
 needs only a little sympathy with his seriousness to find solid 
 qualities in the essay. It is worth while to quote the passage 
 in which he suggests the directions from which the study of 
 language may be approached; few young men at any time 
 could display a clearer understanding of the general field. 
 "The student," he says, "may examine the etymology of a 
 
10 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 language, or review the various periods of its history. He may 
 trace the various changes it has undergone to their respective 
 causes, determine whether they have been produced by the 
 lapse of time, the confusion of events, or by foreign coloniza 
 tion. He may set forth the variety of its dialects, for the spe 
 cific, as well as generic difference in languages, point out the 
 difference or resemblance between them, and survey them, 
 accompanied with all their appendages of causes, contrast 
 and consequence. Is the language of its poetry distinct from 
 that of its prose, in what do they severally consist ? Compare 
 its present state with any period past or future, and thereby 
 discover whether it be yet in its progess towards perfection, 
 or stationary, or in its decline. . . . Besides the local or pro 
 vincial dialects of a language, another variety must also arise 
 founded upon the difference in manners and education of 
 those who speak it. This distinction can only take place in 
 a living tongue; in such, a certain elegance of phrase, as well 
 as of manner, is the criterion of politeness." The essay pro 
 ceeds to suggest the inquiries that can be made into compar 
 ative grammar and the general history of language. 
 
 One wonders what the Philadelphia youths who formed 
 Brockden Brown s audience on this occasion really thought 
 of the frail, untidily dressed author as he declaimed his 
 weighty sentences. From all we can learn they respected 
 him, but very naturally did not like him. He had fostered in 
 his tastes, perhaps unconsciously, a fine contempt for ordi 
 nary practical life; human beings were fast becoming to him 
 objects of study, or opponents to reason with. He neglected 
 his law books more and more and devoted his time to letters 
 and the sort of philosophy he was capable of. Perhaps it was 
 less a surprise than a disappointment to his parents and 
 brothers when he announced that the law was too earthly and 
 sordid for his nature; he would devote himself to literature. 
 The fact that he depended for his support entirely upon his 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 1 1 
 
 parents, somewhat obscures the magnanimity of his decision, 
 but he was sincere in his choice and none of his friends could 
 dissuade him. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was some time before he began his literary career such 
 careers not being easy to start; and meanwhile, perhaps to 
 avoid the expostulations of disappointed relatives and friends, 
 he went to New York, where he already had a few acquaint 
 ances. His stay in that city was at first an aimless sort of 
 visiting, but gradually he came under positive influences that 
 began to shape his character and his career. His best friend 
 was a Dr. Elihu Hubbard Smith, a Yale graduate who had 
 made his acquaintance while studying medicine in Philadel 
 phia. In many respects his interests were akin to Brown s; 
 they both were literary and disposed to the same sort of 
 studies. Smith s example had the good effect, it is said, of 
 making Brown less untidy in dress and more systematic in 
 his habits. It was through Smith that Brown met William 
 Dunlap, his future biographer; through Smith also he was 
 introduced to the Friendly Club, a literary society that met 
 once a week at the home of some member. Apparently the 
 purpose of this circle was much like that of the Belles-Lettres 
 Club, where Brown had cut something of a figure, but in the 
 New York society he was immediately subjected, as a provin 
 cial, to some wholesome discipline. In his journal he wrote: 
 " Last evening spent with the clubists at K. s. Received from 
 the candour of K. a severe castigation for the crimes of dis- 
 putatiousness and dogmatism. Hope to profit by the lesson 
 that he taught me." 
 
 These days in New York seem to have given Brown the best 
 part of his education some acquaintance with life. They 
 came too late to remold his character, but they broadened 
 his outlook and interested him in common things. He trav 
 eled a little in Connecticut and elsewhere. The first really 
 
12 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 human document we have from him is the record of a trip 
 to Rockaway with some others of his literary circle. This 
 account, in the form of a letter, was published in a literary 
 magazine, and can therefore hardly be reckoned as a spon 
 taneous composition, but it has vivacity, and it throws a pleas 
 ant light on Brown s character. Many of the incidents are ob 
 viously true. He began the trip by forgetting to take enough 
 clothes for the stay, and he broke his umbrella on the way 
 down. He tried sea-bathing at sundown, the usual time for 
 it, and the following day went in late in the morning, which 
 he found much more comfortable. Unless some of the de 
 tails are inserted for effect, he had learned to join in mild 
 forms of conviviality. Toward the end of the paper, however, 
 the unsocial note is heard; the author passes from his gentle 
 glow of good fellowship to the dull gray of his recluse rnood, 
 
 "As to myself, I am never at home, never in my element at 
 such a place as this. A thousand nameless restraints incum- 
 ber my speech and my limbs, and I cannot even listen to 
 others with a gay unembarrassed mind. . . . This jaunt to 
 Rockaway has left few agreeable traces behind it. All I re 
 member with any pleasure, are the appearance of the wide 
 ocean, and the incidents of bathing in its surges. Had I been 
 a botanist, and lighted upon some new plant; a mineralogist, 
 and found an agate or a petrifaction; a naturalist, and caught 
 such a butterfly as I never saw before, I should have reflected 
 upon the journey with no little satisfaction. As it was, I set 
 my foot in the City with no other sentiment, but that of re 
 gret, for not having employed these two days in a very dif 
 ferent manner." 
 
 One other passage in this rather significant account may 
 well serve as unconscious criticism of the novels he was later to 
 write. At the table, he says, there was much good humor and 
 some wit, but he could not remember a single good thing de 
 serving of record, and, he goes on, "my powers do not enable 
 me to place the commonplace characters around me in an in- 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 13 
 
 teresting or amusing point of view." It is not without interest 
 as a paradox that the first American novelist, writing in the 
 first years of conscious American democracy, should have 
 been distinguished by his apathy toward every-day, common 
 place humanity. 
 
 His own discomfort in society he seems not to have attrib 
 uted to narrowness of interest or fault in his breeding. For 
 a youth of his temperament it was simpler to find the fault in 
 society. Yet it is mere justice to make plain that this reason 
 ing resulted from better causes than egotism. The generous 
 estimate in which all high-spirited youth then held human 
 nature filled them with dreams of social reform, such as would 
 adapt the world to the needs of the soul. Brown thought too 
 nobly of his literary ideals to blame himself for lack of culture; 
 it was society that was wrong, that discomforted him with 
 its frivolities. 
 
 Social reforms of the Utopian sort began at this time to 
 occupy him, partly because of his reading in Godwin and 
 other Old World revolutionaries, and partly because of the 
 uneasiness of social convention he himself had come to feel. 
 The censorious tone belongs of necessity to reformers. 
 There was no persecution nor misunderstanding in Brockden 
 Brown s life, as there was in Shelley s, to justify it. If he had 
 been unfortunate in the forcing process of his education, he 
 was the last person in the world to realize it, and upon the 
 social system that lay about him time and convention had as 
 yet laid little burden. It is perhaps not ungenerous to ascribe 
 the Utopias he dreamt of in New York, the changes he recom 
 mended in the society with which he supposed himself famil 
 iar, to certain twinges of conscience. This high but vague 
 career upon which he was entering had for a background a 
 disappointed family and his financial dependence upon them. 
 It was not unnatural he should come to see that the time was 
 out of joint. 
 
14 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 In 1797 appeared Alcuin, a dialogue upon the social posi 
 tion of women. This dialogue, a natural development of 
 Brown s debating, presented with some thoroughness the 
 problems of the modern institution of marriage, and ended by 
 advocating divorce of that summary kind that Milton and 
 Shelley more convincingly pleaded for. Brown s interest 
 in the subject was purely academic. Only a year or so before 
 he had been congratulating himself in a letter to a friend that 
 his eyesight was poor and his health weak; perhaps Provi 
 dence by that circumstance, he thought, destined him to 
 happy freedom from the temptations and entanglements of 
 life. Certainly his Socratic dialogue in which the mantle of 
 Diotima falls upon one Mrs. Carter indicates no depth of 
 experience, nor even of interest in the subject. To this 
 same period, or somewhat later, belong also the fragmentary 
 Sketches of a History oj Carsol and Sketches of a History oj 
 the Carrils and Ormes, in which he intended to incorporate 
 historical romance with Utopian proposals. 
 
 A peculiar faith in human nature, even when it was in error, 
 and a Utopian vein in his attitude toward society, continued to 
 distinguish Brown s maturer work. Of his faith in the in 
 dividual something will be said later. His Utopian schemes 
 are ineffectual for the reason just suggested, that they grew 
 out of a literary fashion, not out of the pressure of life s neces 
 sities. They are no more insincere than were Shelley s far 
 more splendid dreams in Queen Mob, but they take from 
 Brown s writing the impression of reality. 
 
 Brown s literary career begins in 1798, with his first pub 
 lished novel, Wieland, or The Trans formation. An earlier 
 novel had indeed been written and prepared for publication, 
 but on account of difficulties following the death of the printer 
 it was abandoned. The material of this novel, Sky Walk, was 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 15 
 
 reworked into later stories. This earlier attempt had been 
 preceded by an unfinished romance, in the form of letters be 
 tween the different characters, after the model furnished by 
 Richardson, but in substance showing a transition from the 
 journalizing and debating that had been Brown s training, to 
 the manner of the story-teller. The fragments are sufficiently 
 complete to indicate at least one character, Golden, who in the 
 mystery of his behavior and his history is a typical Brockden 
 Brown hero. But the fragments are more occupied with life 
 in general than with any particular character or story, and 
 this also remains typical of the author, even at his best. 
 
 Wieland gives Brown his place in American literature. 
 Other stories of his, such as Arthur Mervyn, have better qual 
 ities, but this first book fixed the type of his writing, and his 
 reputation would probably have suffered little had he added 
 nothing more. It was evident at once that he belonged to the 
 so-called Gothic school, then the fashion in Europe. Briefly, 
 the mark of this school was the representation of horror and 
 mystery such as might accumulate in the legends of medieval 
 castles. Supernatural appearances, the expiation of crimes 
 and the working out of curses, were the substance of such 
 tales, of which Horace Walpole s Castle of Otranto, 1764, is 
 usually taken as the first English example. The most typical 
 story of this sort, however, is Mrs. Anne Radcliffe s Mys 
 teries o) Udolpho, 1794, in which the effects of horror are 
 richer and more convincing than in Walpole s amateurish 
 book. 
 
 The interest in medieval romance was, of course, but a part 
 of the so-called romantic revival, which turned from classi 
 cism to the old ballads and legends, the old buildings and su 
 perstitions of the Middle Ages. Walpole s attempt to tell a 
 Gothic legend was but one aspect of that enthusiasm for the 
 past which made him try to turn his house into a Gothic 
 castle. The antiquity of legend or architecture was for him 
 
16 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 its charm, and the remoteness of time was also for Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe and the romancers generally essential to the effect of 
 mystery they desired. In dealing with this mystery, however, 
 two very different methods might be followed. The author 
 might accept it imaginatively, and make it live convincingly 
 before the reader, as Scott would do, or Poe; or the mystery 
 might be explained more or less rationally, and the ghost 
 would turn out to be but a sleep-walker, or some fugitive with 
 a knowledge of secret doors. For either method the story 
 needed an architectural setting, the gloom of Gothic castles, 
 to prepare the mind for the supernatural; the house is almost 
 a character in the tale. This typically German setting was 
 imitated effectively by Poe, as in The Fall oj the House of 
 Usher, and was naturalized on American soil by Hawthorne, 
 in The House oj The Seven Gables. 
 
 Brockden Brown follows the rationalizing method of Mrs. 
 Radcliffe; at the end of the tale he explains the mystery. 
 He places no dependence upon age or architecture for his ef 
 fects; for it was his ambition to write truly American stories, 
 and he liked to set the plot in his own state, or in the country 
 he knew, and in his own time. As a result he could make no 
 use of the trap-doors, the secret passages and hooting owls 
 with which the Gothic romance is usually furnished; but this 
 loss was of no importance, as he depended for his mystery 
 upon more refined phenomena. In Wieland we have the 
 story of a susceptible mind driven to crime and suicide by 
 supernatural voices, which turn out to be the work of a ven 
 triloquist. Given the hero s character, with its tragic pro 
 pensities, and the inexplicable ventriloquist, there is no need 
 of a particular setting. The environment in Brown s novels 
 habitually takes what color it has from the temper of the story; 
 he had no command whatever of local color, and was as far 
 from portraying American as Gothic scenery. 
 
 The quality of Brown s literary genius has been investi- 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 17 
 
 gated by comparing his method of explaining the mystery in a 
 supernatural tale, with Scott s method of leaving the reader 
 to digest the mystery according to his imaginative power. A 
 better understanding, however, of Brown s limitations can be 
 reached by a comparison with Hawthorne, who adopted 
 Brown s method of explaining the mystery rationally, yet kept 
 the poetic atmosphere of his romance unharmed. In The 
 House of The Seven Gables the Pyncheon curse is rationalized 
 without ceasing to appear a divine judgment. In The Marble 
 Faun the rationalizing is of the utmost delicacy; the mystery 
 of the Faun is kept in the realm of superstitious legend, yet 
 explanations are suggested, and no vulgar curiosity interferes 
 with the deep psychological interest in the characters. Brock- 
 den Brown, however, tries to increase the mystery by reserving 
 its solution till the end, thereby appealing to an intellectual 
 curiosity rather than to that emotional sympathy Hawthorne 
 rouses; and when the solution does come, it is insufficient. 
 In Wieland the reader does not believe that ventriloquism can 
 accomplish the effects he has witnessed. The disclosure of 
 the secret to the miserable Wieland is clearly intended as the 
 tragic climax, wherein the hero realizes the extent of his de 
 lusions; but the reader is too preoccupied himself with the 
 surprising disclosure to follow the hero s fortunes. 
 
 It is quite evident that if Brown s reputation depended only 
 upon his plots, it would have starved entirely. The story of 
 Wieland is of the utmost absurdity, if recounted without 
 sympathy, as plain fact. A youth named Carwin, who has se 
 cretly made himself an expert ventriloquist, happens upon a 
 family already predisposed to insanity, and straightway uses 
 his art to ruin what little reason they still have. That is the 
 bare plot. It is incredible that ventriloquism should accom 
 plish all that we are told ; it is almost incredible that such a 
 family as the Wielands should exist. They believe everything 
 the voices utter, even when they are comparatively sane. 
 
i8 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Their tendency to insanity is attributed not only to inherit 
 ance, natural enough, in view of the elder Wieland s char 
 acter, but to his death by spontaneous combustion, which 
 deranged both son and daughter, particularly the son. Clara 
 Wieland tells the story how the mysterious voices around 
 the temple her father had built, terrorize her brother and her 
 self, separate her from her lover, Pleyell, and finally direct the 
 brother to kill his wife and children, which he does, being 
 by this time quite insane. He is imprisoned, but escapes, in 
 tending to kill Clara; but the voices make him realize his 
 crime, and he forthwith kills himself. Clara marries Pleyell, 
 and the villain is allowed to go unpunished. 
 
 Perhaps the most bothersome thing in this strange story is 
 the question why Carwin, the ventriloquist, acted his fiendish 
 part. The author makes no attempt to explain. In all his 
 stories there is what now seems indifference to motive, es 
 pecially in the characters that do wrong. Yet Carwin, like 
 other evil-doers in this type of story, is thoroughly fascinating. 
 It is only in afterthought that the reader sees his devilishness. 
 Artistically weak as a character so unmotivated, so prepos 
 terous in its career, might at first sight seem to be, Carwin is 
 largely the attraction of the book, and other characters like 
 him explain Brockden Brown s claim to remembrance. The 
 author intended to give a complete account of Carwin s life, 
 and the unfinished Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist promised 
 as good reading as any of the novels. In Brockden Brown s 
 imagination he was an unusually gifted youth turning gradu 
 ally into a fiend through the very possession of his gifts. This 
 problem the peril of life s blessings, if it may be so phrased 
 was in one form or another a favorite subtlety of the Roman 
 tic mind. It is not surprising that Brockden Brown, in the 
 very center of Revolutionary movements, should have that 
 faith in the possibilities of human nature and its gifts, which 
 animated Burns and Byron and Shelley. But in such times 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 19 
 
 of faith in man s intellect some philosophers are usually at 
 tracted to the darker speculation of man s destiny, to that 
 immoderate thirst for knowledge, or power, or both which 
 in other ages gave us the legends of Lucifer and Faust. 
 Byron and the spirit over Europe which he so widely repre 
 sented, chose to view such tragic personalities as passive in the 
 hands of their fate, committing willingly no crime, but driven 
 to evil by their natures, for which only Heaven was account 
 able. So the type is represented in Byron s Cain. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Brockden Brown, exemplary 
 Philadelphian, was laying Byronic charges at Heaven s door; 
 he had his model, not in Byron, whose career began a decade 
 later, but in Godwin, whose Caleb Williams is not only peni 
 tent but really entitled to pity, and Falkland himself, the 
 arch-villain in Godwin s story, has moments of un-Byronic 
 softening. But in the character of Carwin Brown was clearly ; 
 developing the theme that the quest of knowledge is morally 
 dangerous. What sympathy we have for him comes from the J 
 difficulties his father put in the way of his education, but the 
 conclusion the author wishes us to reach is that his guilt, the 
 deception he practiced on mankind, "was the offspring of a 
 fatal necessity, that the injustice of others gave it birth and 
 made it unavoidable." 
 
 A character which is so completely the creature of a ruling 
 passion must seem doomed, set apart from the race. That I 
 theme of loneliness, which Shelley s heroes and Byron s illus 
 trate, and the poets themselves illustrated in their lives; which 
 was to find such splendid embodiment in the character of 
 Leatherstocking, and which diffused itself through Haw 
 thorne s genius, here made its entrance into American liter 
 ature. The loneliness in this book is not reserved for Carwin ; 
 all the characters, in different ways, share in it. The older 
 Wieland is set apart from society by his religious mania; Clara 
 Wieland, who tells the family tragedy, by those awful expe- 
 
20 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 \ riences is made peculiar reserved, as she says, for a destiny 
 without alleviation and without example; and her brother, of 
 /course, is completely isolated by his awful fate. 
 
 Brockden Brown lacked what may be called the social im 
 agination; his temper and training prevented him from think 
 ing of life in those complex relations which normally make up 
 human intercourse. He cannot picture a family. But in im 
 agining the psychological experiences of an individual, es 
 pecially under stress of excitement, he has real power, and the 
 fame of Wieland in its time was due to this quality of truth. 
 The outward circumstances of the novel the spontaneous 
 combustion and ventriloquism, are but slightly related to the 
 author s main interest; Wieland s progress to insanity, step 
 by step, is the real story, and any cause of that insanity is suffi 
 cient for Brown s purpose. Nor does the stilted, elaborate 
 style conceal the keen penetration which distinguishes one 
 gradation of Wieland s madness from the next. When he 
 tells of his wife s death, Brown sees to it that the physical 
 trick of ventriloquism is kept in the background; whatever 
 doubts the reader has had, have been absorbed in the earlier 
 part of the story; here both the madman and the reader are 
 intent on the murder realistic enough, to be sure, but not 
 so much so as to interrupt the fascination of the madman s 
 increasing disease. The scene illustrates the book, as a story 
 of the mind : 
 
 "I raised my head and regarded her with steadfast looks. 
 I muttered something about death, and the injunctions of my 
 duty. At these words she shrunk back, and looked at me 
 with a new expression of anguish. After a pause, she clasped 
 her hands, and exclaimed : 
 
 " * O Wieland ! Wieland ! God grant that I am mistaken ; 
 but surely something is wrong. I see it; it is too plain; thou 
 art undone, lost to me and to thyself. At the same time, 
 she gazed on my features with intensest anxiety, in hope that 
 different symptoms would take place. I replied with vehe- 
 
/ 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 21 
 
 mence, Undone! No; my duty is known, and I thank my 
 God that my cowardice is now vanquished, and I have power 
 to fulfil it. Catherine! I pity the weakness of nature; I pity 
 thee, but must not spare. Thy life is claimed from my hands. 
 Thou must die ! 
 
 "Fear was now added to her grief. What mean you? 
 Why talk you of death ? Bethink yourself, Wieland; bethink 
 yourself, and this fit will pass. O why came I hither! Why 
 did you drag me hither ? 
 
 " * I brought thee hither to fulfil a divine command. I am 
 appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must. Saying 
 this I seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavored 
 to free herself from my grasp; but her efforts were vain. 
 
 " * Surely, surely, Wieland, thou dost not mean it. Am I 
 not thy wife? And wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not; 
 and yet I see thou art Wieland no longer! A fury re 
 sistless and horrible possesses thee! spare me spare help 
 help 
 
 "Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help, for 
 mercy. When she could speak no longer, her gestures, her 
 looks appealed to my compassion. My accursed hand was 
 irresolute and tremulous. I meant thy death to be sudden, 
 thy struggles to be brief. Alas ! my heart was infirm ; my re 
 solves mutable. Thrice I slackened my grasp, and life kept 
 its hold, though in the midst of pangs. Her eyeballs started 
 from their sockets. Grimness and distortion took place of 
 all that used to bewitch me into transport, and subdue me 
 into reverence. 
 
 "I was commissioned to kill thee, but not to torment thee 
 with the foresight of thy death ; not to multiply thy fears, and 
 prolong thy agonies. Haggard, and pale, and lifeless, at 
 length thou ceasedst to contend with thy destiny. 
 
 "This was a moment of triumph. Thus had I successfully 
 subdued the stubbornness of human passions; the victim 
 which had been demanded was given; the deed was done 
 past recall. 
 
 "I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I 
 gazed upon it with delight. Such was the elation of my 
 thoughts, that I even broke into laughter. I clapped my 
 hands and exclaimed, It is done! Thy sacred duty is ful- 
 
22 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 filled. To that I have sacrificed, O my God ! thy last and best 
 gift, my wife! 
 
 " For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had 
 set myself forever beyond the reach of selfishness; but my im 
 aginations were false. This rapture quickly subsided. I 
 looked again at my wife. My joyous ebullitions vanished, and 
 I asked myself who it was whom I saw. . . . 
 
 "I will not dwell upon my lapse into desperate and out 
 rageous sorrow. The breath of heaven that sustained me was 
 withdrawn, and I sunk into mere man. I leaped from the 
 floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I uttered screams 
 of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire, and 
 the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music 
 and a bed of roses. 
 
 "I thank my God that this degeneracy was transient, that 
 he deigned once more to raise me aloft. I thought upon what 
 I had done as a sacrifice to duty, and was calm. My wife was 
 dead; but I reflected, that, though this source of human con 
 solation was closed, yet others were still open. If the trans 
 ports of a husband were no more, the feelings of a father had 
 still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their mother 
 should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon them and 
 be comforted. 
 
 "While I revolved these ideas, new warmth flowed in my 
 heart. I was wrong. These feelings were the growth of self 
 ishness. Of this I was not aware, and to dispel the mist that 
 obscured my perceptions, a new effulgence and a new man 
 date were necessary. 
 
 " From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray that was shot 
 into the room. A voice spake like that I had before heard, 
 1 Thou hast done well; but all is not done, the sacrifice is in 
 complete, thy children must be offered, they must perish 
 with their mother. " 
 
 Almost before Wieland was published Brockden Brown 
 wrote his second novel, Ormond, or the Secret Witness, which 
 with two other novels, Arthur Mervyn and Edgar Huntly, ap 
 peared in 1799. Brown is said to have worked at this time on 
 five novels at once. Ormond is one of his inferior books; per- 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 23 
 
 haps its chief right to remembrance is that Shelley admired 
 its long-suffering heroine, Constantia Dudley, and used her 
 name in one of his poems. The plot of the story shows the * 
 strong influence of Godwin, especially in the idea of an ad 
 mirable villain. Ormond, a political and sociological en 
 thusiast, who has revolutionary ideas about religion and 
 marriage, but whose impulses are noble and generous, falls 
 in love with Constantia. Other women have been susceptible 
 to his fascinations, arid Constantia realizes his magnetic in 
 fluence, but her steadfast virtue withstands his pursuit of her. 
 Ormond s remarkable character is turned gradually into that 
 of a fiend; he murders Constantia s father, and compels her 
 finally, in self-defense, to kill him. Constantia s patient and 
 exalted virtues, such as Shelley could admire, make her, as a 
 critic has said, a kind of Griselda, but the same critic has also 
 said justly that she is a bore. "The contemplation of such a 
 character in the abstract is more imposing than the minute 
 details by which we attain the knowledge of it; and although 
 there is nothing, we are told, which the gods look down upon 
 with more satisfaction, than a brave mind struggling with the 
 storms of adversity, yet, when these come in the guise of 
 poverty and all the train of teasing annoyances in domestic 
 life, the tale, if long protracted, too often produces a sensa 
 tion of weariness scarcely to be compensated by the moral 
 grandeur of the spectacle." 
 
 Ormond, the hero, is more interesting to the student of the 
 novel; for impossible as he seems to be to the modern reader, 
 he is one of the chief examples in America of that type of ad 
 mirable villain of which Falkland, in Caleb Williams, and 
 later Byron s heroes generally, are the standard. It is not 
 usual to associate Byron with Brockden Brown, nor with this 
 special character in fiction; what cannot be attributed to God 
 win s influence has been connected, somewhat vaguely, with 
 the popular notions of Freemasonry in Brockden Brown s 
 
24 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 time. It is said that Brown s evil heroes are permeated with 
 the notion that the end justifies the means; they begin with 
 noble ideals, which they deliberately choose to serve by moral 
 short cuts, until they are entangled in their schemes; and their 
 ideals and methods have been ascribed to the Illuminati, the 
 secret order whose part in the American and French Revolu 
 tions is said to have been a large one. Reference to such a 
 society is certainly made in the Memoirs of Carwin, but it 
 seems more rational to ascribe his conception of the amicable 
 villain to those sentimental idealizations of human nature 
 which distinguished the age, and which later produced, and 
 were further fostered by, Byron s heroic outcasts. 
 
 Wieland and Ormond were the first considerable romances 
 produced in America. Their importance as pioneer work was 
 recognized from the beginning, and they brought their hard 
 working young author a place of honor in the community, if 
 not much pecuniary reward. In a letter to his brother James, 
 dated from New York on February 15, 1799, he gives a hint 
 of the quick vogue of Ormond, published only in that year: 
 
 "My social hours and schemes are in their customary 
 state. ... Up till eleven, and abed till eight, plying the 
 quill or the book, and conversing with male or female friends, 
 constitutes the customary series of my amusements and em 
 ployments. I add somewhat, though not so much as I might 
 if I were so inclined, to the number of my friends. I find to 
 be the writer of Wieland and Ormond is a greater recommen 
 dation than I ever imagined it would be." 
 
 VI 
 
 No account of the art of Brockden Brown is complete 
 without some notice of the book which served as his model, 
 William Godwin s Caleb Williams, frequently mentioned in 
 these pages. Godwin, it will be remembered, was the author 
 of the Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, and more famous 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 25 
 
 in literary history as Shelley s father-in-law. Philosophy and 
 social problems, rather than literature, were his occupation, 
 but he had an admirable narrative gift, and his great novel, 
 published in 1794, made an immediate and lasting place for 
 itself. Brockden Brown read it early, and for him it was al 
 ways the standard of story-telling. Before Alcuin was pub 
 lished, while he was writing his first and unfinished romance, 
 he says in his journal, of this attempt at fiction, " What is the 
 nature or merit of my performance? This question is not 
 for me to answer. My decision is favorable or otherwise, ac 
 cording to the views I take of the subject. When a mental 
 comparison is made between this and the mass of novels, I 
 am inclined to be pleased with my own production. But 
 when the objects of comparison are changed, and I revolve 
 the transcendant merits of Caleb Williams, my pleasure is 
 diminished, and is preserved from a total extinction only by 
 the reflection that this performance is the first." 
 
 Godwin intended, as he said, to show in his novel the modes 
 of domestic and unrecorded despotism, by which man be 
 comes the destroyer of man. Fortunately for literature the 
 instinct to tell a thrilling story was too much for this didactic 
 purpose. No one takes the persecution of Williams by Falk 
 land as a typical record of society at the end of the eighteenth 
 century, and no one cares whether the record is typical or 
 not; it is engrossing, and in the given circumstances of the 
 plot it represents character faithfully. Caleb Williams is a 
 young servant in the household of Mr. Falkland, a man of 
 generous virtues. Williams has every reason for gratitude to 
 him, and conies to honor him, as does the reader also. But 
 the servant s one fault, curiosity, leads him to inquire into the 
 cause of Falkland s secluded life, and by wrong-headed per 
 sistence he discovers that Falkland once murdered a man. 
 The ambition of Falkland s life had been to possess the honor 
 and esteem of mankind, and he could not bring himself to ac- 
 
26 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 knowledge a crime committed in madness; he even allowed 
 innocent men to suffer in his place. Up to this point in the 
 story the author presents Falkland s character with so much 
 sympathy, and so much justifying detail, that he rouses no 
 harder feeling than pity, and the too curious Williams, who 
 has violated his master s privacy, seems little better than a 
 sneak. From this moment, however, the story reverses the 
 situation of the characters. 
 
 Falkland confesses his crime to Williams, and binds him 
 to secrecy with a terrible oath. But service to a confessed 
 murderer becomes so unendurable to the youth that he tries 
 to run away, and finds to his horror that he cannot; Falk 
 land s emissaries hunt him down, spy upon him, keep him in 
 prison or out of it, as they choose, until the wretched victim 
 realizes that he is captive for life to the fears of his relentless 
 master. The story must be read before one can appreciate 
 the art by which Falkland is changed from an unfortunate 
 recluse to a persecuting fiend, and Williams from an un 
 scrupulous sneak to a pitiable victim of tyranny. The end of 
 the story is masterly; Williams in desperation has his enemy 
 haled into court, and breaking the oath of secrecy, accuses 
 him of the murder; but the sight of Falkland, wasted with 
 illness and a troubled conscience, brings back the old love of 
 the man, and he wishes he had endured the persecution in 
 silence. The effect of this scene is to remind us that we have 
 been judging Falkland through Williams imagination; when 
 we see the unhappy murderer, we remember that he too has 
 been persecuted. Falkland is therefore the model of the 
 lovable villains in Brockden Brown, and he and Williams 
 both illustrate the romantic loneliness which is the fatal prod 
 uct of a characteristic Falkland being exiled from society 
 by his desire for honorable fame, and Williams by insatiable 
 curiosity. 
 
 The interest of the story is twofold. In the first part God- 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 27 
 
 win shows himself a master of that sort of psychological 
 penetration that Brockden Brown emulated. We see with 
 complete conviction just how Falkland came to be what he 
 is; and though our attention is away from it at the moment, 
 the persecution of Williams is prepared for and made a 
 matter of absolute logic. In the second part the wanderings 
 of the young servant afford opportunity for a realistic portrait 
 of society; life on the highway and in the city, in the taverns 
 and the prisons, is described with qualities of truth that 
 Brockden Brown never commanded. From this part of the 
 story comes the convincing power of Caleb Williams, and 
 where Brown s work makes a feeble appeal the fault is chiefly 
 in his disregard of external verities. Whether or not the story 
 of Caleb Williams could happen in England at the end of the 
 eighteenth century, we see, while we read it, that it did hap 
 pen. 
 
 Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs 0} the Year 1793, another novel 
 published in 1799, is the closest imitation Brown made of 
 Caleb Williams. The book had first appeared in the Weekly 
 Magazine. It is remembered chiefly for its description of the 
 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, in 1793, which the 
 author s family had happily escaped. In 1798, however, 
 Brown saw the same pestilence at close range in New York, 
 where he ran great danger himself, and where his friend Smith 
 lost his life in an attempt to save a stricken foreigner, whom 
 he took into his home. Some hint of Brown s temperament 
 is in his letters to his brother describing the epidemic day by 
 day. The account reads like a section from one of his books 
 no less unhappy, no less composed. Tragedy was his ele 
 ment. But this experience equipped him for his one ac 
 complishment in realism. In the beginning of Ormond he 
 drew a brief picture of yellow fever horrors; in Arthur Meruyn 
 he drew the same picture at length. 
 
 The resemblances of the plot to Caleb Williams are at once 
 
28 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 obvious. Arthur Mervyn, a country youth, comes to Phila 
 delphia to seek his fortune; his father s second marriage drove 
 him from home. Rendered destitute by some surprising ad 
 ventures in the city, he is rescued by a philanthropic man 
 named Welbeck, who with his daughter lives in a lonely but 
 sumptuously furnished home; evidently his wealth is great. 
 He takes Mervyn into his service as a kind of secretary, but 
 gives him little to do, and in his leisure Mervyn studies his 
 employer s many peculiarities. His curiosity is aroused by 
 the promise Welbeck demanded, never to speak of his own 
 history to anyone he might meet. Of Welbeck s history he 
 knows nothing. His distrust of Welbeck increases until one 
 day he hears a pistol-shot in an adjoining room, rushes in, and 
 finds Welbeck standing over the man he has murdered. The 
 scene corresponds to Caleb Williams discovery of Falkland, 
 and is followed by a similar confession. Love of money is 
 Welbeck s passion, as desire of public honor was Falkland s. 
 Welback has committed forgery, and murdered the man who 
 would expose him; the young girl in his house is not his daugh 
 ter but his mistress, whose estate he has stolen, and whom he 
 keeps in seclusion to prevent her from knowing the truth. 
 This disclosure would seem to put Welbeck in Mervyn s 
 power, but as in Godwin s story, the inquisitive young man 
 finds himself in his employer s toils. From that moment his 
 adventures are so complicated that Brown adds a second and 
 inferior instalment of the story, to gather up the threads. 
 
 Here we have once more Godwin s attractive villain and 
 victimized servant. Welbeck is less admirable than Falk 
 land, partly, it has been suggested, because his ambition is 
 more sordid, and partly because we have to take the author s 
 word for any charm he possesses. Godwin exhibits Falkland 
 actually living an honorable and kindly life, but Welbeck 
 takes Mervyn into his house merely in order to work out his 
 plots, and his treatment of the heiress, Mile. Lodi, is infa- 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 29 
 
 mous; and lastly, Welbeck is never altogether frank, as Falk 
 land is. Mervyn is intended to be far more admirable than 
 Caleb Williams. His leaving home illustrates his high spirit, 
 and the illness through which he enters the story, during the 
 epidemic, gives him a claim at once on the reader s pity. He 
 is less effective, however, than Caleb Williams; he is guilty of 
 the same prying curiosity, to cover which he tells small lies, 
 and throughout the book he lacks initiative. 
 
 The story is full of admirable situations, none of which 
 are developed. The fact that Brown was writing four other 
 novels at the same time indicates both the natural richness of 
 his genius, and his lack of thoroughness. Mervyn s first ad 
 venture, in which he is shut up at midnight in a stranger s 
 bedroom, suggests developments that would have done credit 
 to a Stevenson, but it is sufficient for Brown to let his hero 
 take off his shoes and go quietly to the locked door, which is 
 not locked after all, and so make his escape to the street, 
 stupidly leaving his shoes behind, for the surprise of the 
 householder the next morning. 
 
 The power of the book, as has been said, is in its realistic 
 account of the yellow fever epidemic. Brown had not the art 
 to make his realism support the rest of the story; therefore 
 Mervyn s fortunes in Welbeck s house are not a whit more 
 convincing because of the pestilence, and the realism stands 
 apart from the main plot. The introductory episode, in 
 which the invalid Mervyn is taken into the home of the narra 
 tor, is based on Dr. Smith s similar and fatal generosity to 
 the Italian Scandella, and those first pages of the book, though 
 they are not usually praised, might well be so for their quiet 
 record of natural and kindly manners. Two passages will 
 illustrate Brown s skill in horror one, a sketch of a burying 
 party that echoes Defoe s Journal 0} the Plague Year; the 
 other, a Hogarth drawing of the fever hospital, unforgettably 
 terrible. 
 
30 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 "I met not more than a dozen figures, and these were 
 ghost-like, wrapt in cloaks, from behind which they cast upon 
 me glances of wonder and suspicion; and, as I approached, 
 changed their course, to avoid touching me. Their clothes 
 were sprinkled with vinegar; and their nostrils defended from 
 contagion by some powerful perfume. . . . Death seemed to 
 hover over this scene, and I dreaded that the floating pesti 
 lence had already lighted on my frame. I had scarcely over 
 come these tremors, when I approached a house, the door of 
 which was opened, and before which stood a vehicle, which I 
 presently recognized to be a hearse. 
 
 "The driver was seated in it. I stood still to mark his vis 
 age, and to observe the course which he proposed to take. 
 Presently a coffin, borne by two men, issued from the house. 
 The driver was a negro, but his companions were white. 
 Their features were marked by a ferocious indifference to 
 danger or pity. One of them as he assisted in thrusting the 
 coffin into the cavity provided for it, said, I ll be damned if I 
 think the poor dog was quite dead. It wasn t the fever that 
 killed him, but the sight of the girl and her mother on the 
 floor. I wonder how they all got into that room. What 
 carried them there ? 
 
 "The other surlily muttered, Their legs to be sure. 
 
 "But what should they hug together in one room for? 
 
 " To save us trouble to be sure. 
 
 "And I thank them with all my heart; but damn it, it 
 wasn t right to put him in his coffin before the breath was 
 fairly gone. I thought the last look he gave me, told me to 
 stay a few minutes. 
 
 "Pshaw! He could not live. The sooner dead the better 
 for him; as well as for us. Did you mark how he eyed us, 
 when we carried away his wife and daughter ? I never cried 
 in my life, since I was knee-high, but curse me if I ever felt 
 in better tune for the business than just then. * Hey! con 
 tinued he, looking up, and observing me standing a few paces 
 distant, and listening to their discourse, what s wanted? 
 Anybody dead? " 
 
 "I lay upon a mattress, whose condition proved that a 
 half-decayed corpse had recently been dragged from it. The 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 31 
 
 room was large, but it was covered with beds like my own. 
 Between each, there was scarcely the interval of three feet. 
 Each sustained a wretch, whose groans and distortions be 
 spoke the desperateness of his condition. 
 
 "The atmosphere was loaded with mortal stenches. A 
 vapor, suffocating and malignant, scarcely allowed me to 
 breathe. No suitable receptacle was provided for the evacua 
 tions produced by medicine or disease. My nearest neighbor 
 was struggling with death, and my bed, casually extended, 
 was moist with the detestable matter which poured from his 
 stomach. 
 
 " You will scarcely believe that, in this scene of horrors, the 
 sound of laughter should be overheard. While the upper 
 rooms of this building are filled with the sick and the dying, 
 the lower apartments are the scene of carousals and mirth. 
 The wretches who are hired, at enormous wages, to tend the 
 sick and convey away the dead, neglect their duty and con 
 sume the cordials, which are provided for the patients, in de 
 bauchery and riot. 
 
 " A female visage, bloated with malignity and drunkenness, 
 occasionally looked in. Dying eyes were cast upon her, in 
 voking the boon, perhaps, of a drop of cold water, or her as 
 sistance to change a posture which compelled him to behold 
 the ghastly writhings or deathful smile of his neighbor. 
 
 "The visitant had left the banquet for a moment, only to 
 see who was dead. If she entered the room, blinking eyes 
 and reeling steps showed her to be totally unqualified for 
 ministering the aid that was needed. Presently she disap 
 peared and others ascended the staircase, a coffin was de 
 posited at the door, the wretch, whose heart still quivered, 
 was seized by rude hands, and dragged along the floor into the 
 passage." 
 
 VII 
 
 The year 1799 must have been a crowded time for Brock- 
 den Brown. Of the five novels he was working on, three ap 
 peared in that year. In June he did some traveling in Con 
 necticut an experience nearly as adventurous then as a trip 
 to California now. He kept a note-book of the journey, to 
 
32 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 have, as he said, a scheme for preserving his impressions in a 
 way that might serve a public and private purpose, adding, 
 that Connecticut had never been described, and surely it 
 merited a description. Two months earlier he had published 
 the first number of The Monthly Magazine and American 
 Review, which ran for little over a year. The incomplete 
 Memoirs of Stephen Calvert appeared in its pages, and part of 
 Edgar Huntly; and the magazine shows, as might be expected, 
 interest in the German literature which was influencing the 
 romantic school from which Brown derived. 
 
 Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker, was the third 
 novel to appear in this prolific year. The importance of this 
 story is not perhaps greater than of some of the others, but it 
 will receive more consideration because in it the American 
 Indian begins, not unworthily, his career in our fiction; in 
 part at least this is a border tale of adventure. The obsession 
 which creates the mystery of the story is here sleep-walking, 
 as the title implies; obviously the problems of the plot will be 
 physical instead of psychological. Although this change 
 takes Brockden Brown out of a field in which he had special 
 interest, it is on the whole of advantage to the story. Even 
 so, the plot breaks in the middle like most of Brown s work, 
 following the example of Caleb Williams, but it would have 
 been an outrageous insult to congruity if a psychological story 
 had preceded the crude melodrama of the Indian adventures. 
 Brown could always invent incident, though he was careless 
 in working out his situations. He had the necessary ingenu 
 ity, though neither the poetry nor the art, to have been a true 
 predecessor of Cooper, and whatever faults this novel has, it 
 is not dull. 
 
 Edgar Huntly is a young native of the Pennsylvania fron 
 tier, who one night finds a friend murdered beneath a certain 
 elm tree. His suspicions are accordingly directed to a strange 
 creature named Clithero, whom he discovers several nights 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 33 
 
 later digging under the same tree. When he approaches the 
 spot, he sees that Clithero, for all his labor, is asleep. He is 
 convinced that Clithero murdered the friend that his con 
 science brings him in his dreams to the place of his crime. 
 This opening scene is one of Brown s best strokes of crafts 
 manship; the situation is in itself striking, and the attention 
 is diverted from the plausibility of the sleep-walking to the 
 murder problem. 
 
 Huntly demands an explanation of Clithero, who in a 
 typical confession scene tells of a murder he once committed 
 in self-defense, long ago, which wrecked his life and preys 
 still upon his reason. This explanation naturally does not 
 account for his somnambulistic performance under that par 
 ticular elm, and as he will tell nothing more, Huntly gives up 
 his inquiries for the time. Clithero immediately takes to a 
 wild cavern on the edge of the wilderness and hides; Huntly 
 finds him evidently in a kind of insanity endeavoring to starve 
 himself to death. Huntly s visits to him, for the purpose of 
 saving him from self-destruction, are varied by encounters, 
 more or less heroic, with mountain lions. 
 
 At this point the story turns in a new direction. One night 
 Huntly awakes in agony, to find himself at the bottom of a 
 cavern, open apparently only to the sky. Though the reader 
 has not suspected it, he too, for the purpose of this predica 
 ment, is a sleep-walker, and has tumbled down the cavern 
 while searching in his dreams for more mountain lions. For 
 tunately he has brought along in his sleep, and despite his 
 fall still holds, the tomahawk that had been his defense 
 against the panthers. In his attempts to get out of the cavern 
 he finds a passage into a cave, which in turn leads up to level 
 ground. But at the mouth of the cave he finds three Indians 
 sleeping. Near them is a beautiful girl, bound captive, and 
 just outside the cave a fourth Indian stands guard. Huntly 
 glides through the sleeping group, brains the sentinel before 
 
34 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the alarm can be given, unbinds the girl, and carries her away 
 without waking up the other three Indians. In the fight that 
 follows next day, when the Indians pursue, Huntly kills them 
 all, and to the end of the story the adventure keeps fairly 
 well up to that pace. At the very last the author cheats the 
 reader out of what little curiosity remains over from the first 
 part of the story, by explaining that Huntly s friend had been 
 murdered by the Indians, and Clithero was simply a lunatic. 
 
 But the part of the story that deals with the Indians is still 
 interesting, even after Cooper has set a standard for the 
 modern reader. How new the picture must have been, be 
 fore Cooper s time, can well be imagined. Making all allow 
 ance for the melodramatic, sometimes juvenile, developments 
 of the plot, the Indians in it are drawn with dignity and con 
 siderable truth. Brown had no natural love of the frontier, 
 nor any experience of it; his attitude towards the red man is 
 that of the dweller in the settlements, who sees the Indian 
 only occasionally, when he comes in to spend his money or to 
 make trouble; it is somewhat the attitude of Cooper s Pio 
 neers. There is no attempt to idealize the savage morally. 
 He is shown as the treacherous and wily foe, and he associ 
 ates himself in the reader s imagination with the two pan 
 thers that had wandered in from the wilderness to trouble the 
 farmers. Yet the ferocity and mysterious skill of the Indian 
 in war, like the agility of the panther, gains a sort of unmoral 
 credit; these savage raiders have the keen sight, delicate hear 
 ing and sure hand that rouses admiration for Cooper s In 
 dians; and Brockden Brown is careful to make them neither 
 too monstrous nor too successful, they are simply half-tamed 
 savages who break into murderous revolt and are put down 
 by superior civilization and order. 
 
 Only one Indian is sufficiently characterized to seem an 
 individual. That is the old hag, Deb, or Queen Mab, as the 
 white people call her, who lives on public bounty and be- 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 35 
 
 cause of fancied grievances instigates her people to the raid. 
 Her realistic portrait seems to belong to a modern school- 
 she would hardly be found among Cooper s Indians; we sus 
 pect that Brown is here and here only describing the sav 
 age from observation. She originally belonged, he says, to 
 the tribe of Delawares, or Lenni-Lenape the tribe of which 
 Uncas was the last chief. 
 
 "The village inhabited by this clan was built upon the 
 ground which now constitutes my uncle s barn-yard and 
 orchard. On the departure of her countrymen, this female 
 burnt the empty wigwams and retired into the fastnesses of 
 Norwalk. She selected a spot suitable for an Indian dwell 
 ing and a small plantation of maize, and in which she was 
 seldom liable to interruption and intrusion. 
 
 "Her only companions were three dogs, of the Indian or 
 wolf species. These animals differed in nothing from their 
 kinsmen of the forest, but in their attachment and obedience 
 to their mistress. She governed them with absolute sway. 
 They were her servants and protectors, and attended her 
 person or guarded her threshold, agreeable to her directions. 
 She fed them with corn and they supplied her and themselves 
 with meat, by hunting squirrels, raccoons, and rabbits. . . . 
 
 "The chief employment of this woman, when at home, be 
 sides plucking the weeds from among her corn, bruising the 
 grain between two stones, and setting her snares for rabbits 
 and possums, was to talk. Though in solitude, her tongue 
 was never at rest but when she was asleep; but her conversa 
 tion was merely addressed to her dogs. Her voice was sharp 
 and shrill, and her gesticulations were vehement and gro 
 tesque. A hearer would naturally imagine that she was 
 scolding; but, in truth, she was merely giving them directions. 
 Having no other object of contemplation or subject of dis 
 course, she always found, in their posture and looks, occasion 
 for praise, or blame, or command. The readiness with which 
 they understood, and the docility with which they obeyed her 
 movements and words, were truly wonderful. . . . 
 
 "She seldom left the hut but to visit the neighboring in 
 habitants, and demand from them food and clothing, or 
 
36 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 whatever her necessities required. These were exacted as her 
 due; to have her wants supplied was her prerogative, and to 
 withhold what she claimed was rebellion. She conceived 
 that by remaining behind her countrymen she succeeded to 
 the government, and retained the possession of all this region. 
 The English were aliens and sojourners, who occupied the 
 land merely by her connivance and permission, and whom she 
 allowed to remain on no terms but those of supplying her 
 wants." 
 
 Queen Mab is the only personality in this book, and a rea 
 sonable claim might be made that she is the only original 
 character in all Brockden Brown s writing. His important 
 work ends with Edgar Huntly, and when we look back upon 
 the sum of his most representative writing, we see that his 
 limitations in the creation of character as well as of plot, are 
 great. He is never at a loss for an incident, and he can intro 
 duce any number of lay figures to fill his stage, but his hasty 
 methods of composition were fatal to any structural develop 
 ment of plot, and curiously enough, with his great interest in 
 psychology he pays little attention to character. In the case 
 of his amiable villains, his charitable faith in humanity sur 
 rounds the hero for the time being in an atmosphere of sym 
 pathy, but when the book is laid aside, Ormond and Welbeck 
 and Carwin fade into an unmoral bloodlessness, that seems 
 more vital only in the course of the unusual incidents. It is 
 almost impossible to imagine a character of Brockden Brown s 
 as having further experiences after the book ends, though 
 that is the simplest test of convincing character drawing. 
 The motives, even of the villians, are weak or insufficiently 
 stated, which may explain why they pale in the memory. 
 Carwin has no reason for his crimes, Ormond an inadequate 
 one, and Welbeck is such a mixture of shrewdness and folly, 
 and such a liar to boot, that we are inclined to give him up as 
 the author gives up Clithero, for a lunatic. 
 
 But though these characters are frequently not characters 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 37 
 
 at all mere lay figures, yet that they appeal to the imagina 
 tion, in certain moods more common a hundred years ago, is 
 not to be denied. The art of the Gothic romance at its best 
 was essentially mechanical and scenic the art of the theater. 
 Stage, action, dialogue, character, all were represented in the 
 rough, as so many stimuli of the audience s imagination; if 
 you lost yourself in the tinsel and glare, you saw truth before 
 you, but if you could not so lose yourself, you saw only the 
 tinsel and glare. We have been sophisticated into a closer 
 habit of scrutiny nowadays. The brook that tumbles its 
 cascade toward the footlights must flow with real water, and 
 the players who impersonate a family are chosen for resem 
 blances of complexion or profile, so that the sluggish imag 
 ination of the house will not be overtaxed. Even Scott, our 
 beloved romancer, now fails to create for many readers the 
 old illusion of enchanted truth. Di Vernon poses on horse 
 back before them, and the pose to them means nothing. If 
 such a fate has overtaken Sir Walter, we need not be too hard 
 on the achievements of the thinner-talented Philadelphia 
 youth. An unjaded imagination can still fill out his theat 
 rical hints, and for others less fortunate Queen Mab is a com 
 forting promise of the modern photograph. 
 
 Wieland is the most typical of Brown s characters largely 
 because he has so little character. We watch his actions and 
 his psychological states as they are induced by Carwin s 
 trickery; the process has its fascination, and it seems true; the 
 deluded wretch, passing from too sensitive religiosity to mur 
 derous insanity, is an advance study of those mental transi 
 tions which Hawthorne was to trace so marvelously. But 
 Hawthorne would have made Wieland a responsible charac 
 ter; he would have made the transitions result from resolves 
 and actions, as in the changed nature of Roger Chillingworth. 
 For Brockden Brown s purposes it makes no difference 
 whether Wieland is morally good or bad, and in this separa- 
 
38 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 tion of psychological and moral interests in character lies his 
 resemblance to Poe and his difference from Hawthorne. 
 
 Brown never grasped the principle that character can be, 
 or should be, exhibited by action. A less dramatic mind than 
 his could hardly be imagined. Even in those actions which 
 are intended to be admirable, where the actor is intended to 
 have our praise, the author fails to make the proper connec 
 tion between the act and the character. In Edgar Huntly, 
 where the hero is enabled to kill the three Indians and save 
 the girl, Cooper would have made the incident the direct re 
 sult of character in Leatherstocking, or whoever it might 
 have been; we should have had just one more illustration of 
 his skill or courage, or some other virtue. As Brown tells it 
 Huntly accomplished the rescue by sheer luck; he needs a 
 freshly loaded gun for each Indian, and the author ingen 
 iously puts a weapon into his hand whenever he needs one. 
 We admire the author s foresight, not Huntly s. And when 
 the book is closed, the scene, so far as Huntly is concerned, is 
 distasteful; it seems far from an admirable thing to stand 
 outside a door with a sufficient supply of loaded guns, and 
 shoot down Indians as they come out. 
 
 VIII 
 
 In July, 1801, Brown started on a somewhat extended trip 
 through New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. As was 
 usual with him, the journey was recorded and commented 
 upon in his diary and letters. Though his note-books are not 
 to be compared with Hawthorne s so far as literary quality or 
 observation are concerned, yet they do one good service for 
 Brown, as Hawthorne s do for him they readjust our notion 
 of his personality after we have been living in the atmosphere 
 of his romances. He was not in general a good observer, but 
 as he grew older he acquired a journalist s rather than a phi 
 losopher s alertness for material; the moralizing lessens, and 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 39 
 
 the world he moved in enters the journal in matter-of-fact 
 items. We are reminded that Brockden Brown was after all 
 only a young man, handicapped by his precocity, and the 
 change in the note-book is the welcome sign of experience and 
 increasing poise. As he remarks at the beginning of this 
 journey, he had been in New York only three or four years, 
 a small space into which to crowd so much work and suffer 
 ing and pleasure as had been his, and this had been his only 
 education in the broadest sense. He had come to the city a 
 provincial young pedant; already he was a reputable man of 
 letters, an honored citizen, the first American novelist. 
 
 The journey began with a voyage up the Hudson, which 
 Brown had never explored further than ten miles above New 
 York. He was curious to see the Highlands and the " Kaats- 
 Kill Mountains," which he described as of "stupendous * 
 height; their elevation had already been ascertained, he says, 
 but he does not recollect what it is. When the tide was 
 against them, the passengers made excursions along the shore 
 and bathed in the river. With a favoring tide, he goes on, 
 "we left Red-hook at eight o clock, but were obliged to an 
 chor again before morning. At six o clock my friend and I 
 accompanied the captain ashore, in search of milk and black 
 berries. I have since seated myself on deck, watching the 
 shore, as the breeze carried us slowly along. My friend is 
 busy with his spyglass, reconnoitering the rocks and hay 
 stacks, and surveying the wharves and store houses of Lun- 
 nenburg and Hudson, villages we have just passed. I have 
 observed but little besides a steep bank, roughened by rocks 
 and bushes, occasionally yielding to slopes of a parched and 
 yellowish soil, with poor cottages sparingly scattered, and now 
 and then a small garden or field of corn. A fellow passenger 
 left us at Hudson. One only remaining, a Mr. H - of 
 Albany, a well behaved man, whose attention is swallowed up 
 by Mrs. Bennet s Beggar Girl. " 
 
40 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 The captain s library consisted of a book on navigation, 
 one on arithmetic, and Goldsmith s Citizen of the World. 
 This last was evidently new to Brown, who tried to read it, 
 for want of something to pass the time, but found he did not 
 like it; the fiction is ill-supported, he says, "the style smooth 
 and elegant, but the sentiments and observations far from 
 judicious or profound." 
 
 At the end of his summer trip Brown returned to Philadel 
 phia, which in this year had once more become his home. 
 For a while he lived with his brother Armit, but he was al 
 ready planning for a household of his own. In New York he 
 had met the family of Dr. William Linn, a Presbyterian 
 minister. John Blair Linn, the son, who became one of 
 Brown s best friends, was like his father a minister, and had 
 a church in Philadelphia. To this friend s sister, Elizabeth 
 Linn, Brown became engaged, and they were married in No 
 vember, 1804. 
 
 Had Brown s life been prolonged the influence of his love 
 affair and his marriage might have appeared strongly in his 
 work. His last two novels were occupied with studies of 
 feminine character, to the neglect of masculine villains and 
 horrors, and his other writings began to show broad human 
 interests; from this time also his patriotism is seen in his 
 concern for politics and for America s relations with Great 
 Britain. Before he met Miss Linn, think of him as kindly as 
 we may, he was in many respects a prig, and what he did not 
 know about the course of true love in the human breast was 
 complete. When he wrote Alcuin he had the usual contempt 
 of over-intellectual young men for any but intellectual pas 
 sions: "I know that love, as it is commonly understood, is an 
 empty and capricious passion. ... To thwart it is often to 
 destroy it, and sometimes to qualify the victim of the delu 
 sion for Bedlam. In the majority of cases it is nothing but a 
 miserable project of affectation. The languishing and sigh- 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 41 
 
 ing lover is an object to which the errors of mankind have 
 annexed a certain degree of reverence." Constantia Dudley, 
 in Ormondj and the frailer ladies in the same story, Hel 
 ena and Martinette, sufficiently exhibit in different ways 
 Brown s conscientious ignorance of the feminine mind. And 
 shortly before his betrothal he perpetrated this delicious self- 
 advertisement "My conceptions of the delights and benefits 
 connected with love and marriage, are exquisite. They have 
 swayed most of my thoughts, and many of my actions since 
 I arrived at the age of reflection and maturity. They have 
 given birth to the sentiment of love, with regard to several 
 women. Mutual circumstances have frustrated the natural 
 operations of that sentiment in several instances. At present 
 I am free." 
 
 Brown s changed attitude toward life is evident in Clara 
 Howard, the last novel he wrote in New York, published in 
 1 80 1. In plot this story much resembles Edgar Huntly; in 
 both books a brother is intrusted with money, which after 
 his death his sister inherits, supposing it to be a legacy, and 
 then an embarrassing claimant of it appears. And in both 
 stories the benefactor of the hero is an Englishman, who has 
 had certain stereotyped adventures. The similarity of inci 
 dents partly explains the speed with which Brockden Brown 
 turned out his group of novels, bu&lara Howard, in spite 6T~ 
 that similarity, is distinct from me preceding stories and 
 marks the author s change of ideals. The plot is orderly and 
 for the most part clearly worked out. The chief interest is 
 focused on the characters of Clara Howard and Mary Wil- 
 mot, almost equally the heroines. Most significant is the new 
 emphasis on character rather than psychology; the experi 
 ences of both girls are moral tests. 
 
 Edward Hartley becomes the friend of Mary Wilmot s 
 brother, and through this friendship he comes to know the 
 sister, who falls in love with him. Hartley s affection for her 
 
42 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 is no more than friendship, but he realizes her devotion to 
 him, and when Mary s brother dies, they become engaged. 
 The engagement is an offhand sort of provision for Mary s 
 future. Mary then lives quietly on the five thousand dollars 
 she has discovered in her brother s possession after his death, 
 but at the end of six months a man named Morton appears, 
 who says that he left the money in Wilmot s care. At about 
 the same time Mr. Howard, Hartley s benefactor, returns to 
 this country from England, where he has married a widow, 
 an old flame of his; her daughter, Clara Howard, he hopes 
 will be Hartley s wife. 
 
 Mary Wilmot, learning of this plan, unselfishly disappears, 
 so that Hartley will be free. Hartley and Clara fall in love 
 promptly, but Hartley feels bound to tell her his relations 
 with Mary and his fear for her fate. Clara, equally mag 
 nanimous, gives up her lover and insists that he find the other 
 woman. The situation viewed abstractly is rather funny, 
 as Clara against her own wishes drives Hartley, much against 
 his, to marry Mary, who has run off with another man. But 
 the problem is real in the book, and Mary and Clara are fine 
 characters. The difficulties are solved when Mary marries a 
 former lover, Sedley. 
 
 This novel is quite lacking in those highly wrought incidents 
 that give Wieland and Arthur Mervyn their fame; it is not 
 surprising that its tameness has doomed it to obscurity. But 
 it proves a capacity in the author for a broadened, normal 
 point of view, which from his early mental habit could not 
 have been expected. The plot gives him occasion also to 
 comment on the differences between American and English 
 social ideals, when Hartley, a country boy of humble par 
 ents, finds himself in love with the well-born Clara Howard. 
 Though he had not visited England, Brown s comment is 
 thoughtful and just, and in allowing Hartley to marry the 
 English girl he illustrates consciously the triumph of those 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 43 
 
 democratic ideals which, he says, are the proud distinction ( 
 between this country and Europe. 
 
 It has been well said that in such characters as Mary Wilmot 
 and Clara Howard, and earlier perhaps in Constantia Dud 
 ley, Brown was portraying a new type of heroine, and should 
 have the credit for such pioneer work, no matter how crude 
 it was. These women think and act for themselves, with all 
 the newly discovered consciousness of woman s rights. They 
 are not portraits, but social ideals, the concrete development 
 of the theories in Alcuin. Too much credit can hardly be 
 given to the author who conceived of this now common type 
 so far in advance of its general acceptance. So early an ex 
 ample of the type as Diana Vernon was not to appear for 
 nearly twenty years. Scott, and Cooper after him, were in 
 general guided by eighteenth-century standards of the well- 
 bred heroine, and their forceful women, like Norna in The 
 Pirate or Judith Hutter hi The Deerslayer, are exceptions, 
 social outcasts. Brown was a thinker in a sense that Scott 
 was not, and being less sane than Cooper, his speculations 
 were more adventurous and in this particular more modern. 
 It would be a not unprofitable fancy to trace the variations of 
 type from Clara Howard or Mary Wilmot through Hester 
 Prynne to Daisy Miller; not even so fanciful a descent can be 
 traced from Scott s or Cooper s normal heroines. 
 
 In October of 1803 Brown inaugurated the Literary Maga 
 zine and American Register, which continued for five years. 
 The pleasures of magazine editing were not great in those 
 days, as Brown s letters show. He had to supply most of the 
 material for the magazine himself in one case writing the 
 whole number, with the exception of one contribution. The 
 fragmentary Memoirs o] Carwin appeared in instalments 
 until the busy editor could not find leisure to continue them. 
 His health was not good at this time, partly because of over 
 work; the disease which was to end his life either brought 
 
44 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 about his invalid condition, or was encouraged by it. The 
 humor of an unknown correspondent who proposed to make 
 himself acceptable to his political party by publishing in 
 Brown s periodical an invective against Adams and a eulogy 
 of Jefferson, would hardly offset the business disappoint 
 ments and embarrassments the editor had to complain of. 
 How precarious any such venture was, may be gathered from 
 Brown s letter to his brother Armit, in 1798, when he was 
 planning his first experiment, the Monthly Magazine. How 
 often again were American authors to indulge in such opti 
 mistic calculations! "Four hundred subscribers will repay 
 the annual expense of sixteen hundred dollars. As soon as 
 this number is obtained, the printers will begin, and trust to 
 the punctual payment of these for reimbursement. All above 
 four hundred will be clear profit for me; one thousand sub 
 scribers will produce four thousand five hundred dollars 
 [sic], and deducting the annual expense will leave two thou 
 sand seven hundred [sic]. If this sum be attainable, in a 
 year or two you will allow that my prospect is consoling." 
 If this reckoning illustrates Brown s business capacity, per 
 haps it is no wonder that the first magazine failed, and the 
 second had only a more lingering death. It is somewhat 
 puzzling to explain how Brown supported himself at all, or 
 could think of supporting a family. His novels brought him 
 reputation, but no money; in one of his letters he says that the 
 best an American author can hope for is to pay expenses. 
 That he expected little from the Literary Magazine is inti 
 mated in terms more magnanimous than calculated to cheer 
 the publisher, John Conrad, who financed the periodical and 
 paid Brown a salary for editing it; "The project is not a mer 
 cenary one," writes the editor. "Nobody relies for subsist 
 ence on its success, nor does the editor put anything but his 
 reputation at stake. At the same time, he cannot but be de 
 sirous of an ample subscription, not merely because pecuniary 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 45 
 
 profit is acceptable, but because this is the best proof which 
 he can receive that his endeavors to amuse and instruct have 
 not been unsuccessful." 
 
 In this year, 1803, Brown published a political pamphlet 
 entitled, An Address to the Government of The United States 
 on the Cession of Louisiana to the French; and on the Late 
 Breach of Treaty by the Spaniards: including a translation of a 
 memorial, on the war of St. Domingo and cession of the Mis 
 sissippi to France, drawn up by a French counsellor of state. 
 The essay so formidably introduced is an argument, sup 
 posed to be drawn from a French document, to prove that the 
 territory of Louisiana was an invaluable possession, and 
 Brown pleaded for its acquisition by the United States. The 
 pamphlet is a return to the debate as a literary form, such as 
 Alcuin, but much more direct and mature in method. A 
 second pamphlet, The British Treaty, begins with a dis 
 cussion of Great Britain s treatment of this country as likely 
 to lead to war especially such incidents as the searching of 
 the frigate Chesapeake in 1807. Brown then proceeds to ex 
 amine in detail the terms of the treaty of 1806. His third 
 pamphlet, in 1809, dealt with the embargo placed upon com 
 merce with foreign ports, under the ponderous title, Address 
 to the Congress of the United States on the utility and justice 
 of restrictions upon foreign commerce, with reflections on 
 Foreign Trade in general, and the future prospects of America. 
 After expounding with considerable power the ridiculous 
 futility of trying to retaliate for the French and English em 
 bargoes, Brown makes an excursion that does more justice to 
 his patriotism than to his logic, and explains how desirable 
 for internal commerce the embargo would be, were it other 
 wise desirable or possible. He saw the necessity of building 
 up domestic trade and manufactures, and then uniting all 
 sections of the country economically. Of all three pamph 
 lets it may be said that they reflect broad patriotism and much 
 
46 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 economic sense, and the attitude of the author in each was in 
 accord with later opinion. 
 
 In 1804, three months before Brown s marriage with Miss 
 Linn, occurred the death of her brother John Blair Linn, then 
 pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Dr. 
 Linn was a poet in a harmless way, and for a posthumous 
 volume of his verse Brown wrote a biographical sketch. 
 
 In Brown s last novel, Jane Talbot, published in England in 
 this year, William Godwin s influence is turned to peculiar ac 
 count; it is charged against the hero, by one of the characters, 
 that he is a disciple of Godwin, and the charge is felt to be a 
 serious one. The story is unworthy of its author, except that 
 it is coherent and quiet in Brown s later manner. Golden, 
 the hero, falls in love with Jane Talbot, an adopted child. 
 Like the editor of the Literary Magazine, Golden has no mer 
 cenary ambitions, in fact, he is so high-minded that he is 
 hardly willing to support himself, let alone a wife. He and 
 Jane discuss by letter the problem that naturally ensues; after 
 a mysterious disappearance, which almost leads Jane to marry 
 someone else, Golden returns, and with untypical prompt 
 ness marries her himself. The letters which form the greater 
 part of the book are intended as analyses of the heart, some 
 what in Richardson s way. The method fits well with Brown s 
 gift for debate and discussion, but it interrupts the flow of 
 what narrative there is. It is the author who is speaking when 
 Jane says, "I have always found an unaccountable pleasure 
 in dissecting, as it were, my heart, uncovering one by one its 
 many folds, and laying it before you, as a country is shown 
 on a map." 
 
 In 1806 Conrad, the publisher of the Literary Magazine, 
 brought out the first annual volume of The American Regis 
 ter, edited by Brown. The publication had considerable 
 success, and it stopped only with the editor s death. It con 
 tained records of public events in America and Europe, of 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 47 
 
 legislation, of the advances of science, and a review of literary 
 publications. During this time for the last years of his 
 life Brown worked on a geography, curiously enough re 
 verting to that childhood interest which had mounted him on 
 the parlor table. The book, which was left unfinished, was 
 promising enough to make his friends wish to publish it as it 
 was. 
 
 For some time Brockden Brown s friends had suspected 
 that he was a victim of consumption. His temperament, per 
 haps his needs, did not allow him leisure for rest or recrea 
 tion to fight the disease, and his constitution was always 
 frail. Having the traditional optimism of consumptive peo 
 ple, he persisted in explaining away all his symptoms, un 
 til his condition was desperate. He was persuaded to try a 
 sea voyage, and determined to visit his brother James in 
 England. But during the summer of 1809 he made his last 
 journey, a visit to New Jersey and New York. In November 
 he was unable to leave his bed, and on February 22, 1810, he 
 died. 
 
 In person Brown was tall and thin, but he gave the im 
 pression of much more strength than he had. His hair was 
 black, and is said to have been straight, though in his por 
 trait it appears to be wavy. His chin was weak, in fact, 
 none of his features were distinguished except his large and 
 dreamy eyes, yet those who saw him were impressed by his 
 remarkable personality, apparent at a glance. 
 
 IX 
 
 He was only thirty-nine years old when he died. If it is 
 true that the great novels are all written after forty, we may 
 think of his stories as prentice work, and speculate on the 
 masterpiece he would have written had be lived. But there 
 is no good reason for thinking of him as cut off in his promise, 
 like Keats or Shelley, His early death is pathetic for o.ther 
 
48 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 reasons; in literature there is no cause to doubt that he had 
 said his say. He was not by temperament a novelist ; he could 
 neither tell a vital, coherent narrative, nor draw a true pic 
 ture of manners. That he wrote stories at all was due to his 
 need of a medium for his speculations about life, and as God 
 win had used the novel effectively to attack domestic tyranny, 
 it was easy for Brown to exploit his psychological notions 
 through the same form. 
 
 The very real power that he is master of from time to time 
 cannot be denied; his fame rests on it. But he was by nature 
 a publicist, and story-telling only happened to be among his 
 experiments. For that very reason, perhaps, he is a typical 
 figure in his place at the beginning of American literature. 
 Our great writers, especially in prose, have been public- 
 spirited before they were artistic. Uncle Tom s Cabin is only 
 one brilliant success among a thousand attempts to make a 
 reform party of the Muses. It is to his credit as a citizen that 
 Brown probably never wrote without the welfare of men, es 
 pecially of his countrymen, in mind; whatever new truth he 
 acquired, he made feverish haste to share with any who would 
 read. The result is that he always has his eye on the reader 
 whom he is instructing; he rarely loses himself in the story. 
 
 He is also prophetic of American literature in his readiness 
 to welcome and absorb foreign culture. He is the disciple of 
 Godwin, as he would have been of Scott, and he gave as 
 cordial appreciation to the German and Italian literatures, 
 though his education did not admit him to all their treasures. 
 He is distinctly himself, as Cooper and Emerson in their 
 separate ways are distinctly themselves, and equally Ameri 
 can. All that he learned from other lands he transmuted into 
 a native product, as he transferred the Gothic romance to 
 Philadelphia. That use of a native stage, it has been said, 
 is enough to earn our gratitude. He wrote of scenes he knew, 
 and his tales lose no power by the setting. 
 
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 49 
 
 He showed one great quality, in his brief literary career; 
 he was quick to learn. In the preface to Wieland he had 
 anticipated criticisms of the ventriloquism and spontaneous 
 combustion phenomena not generally credible by re 
 marking that "it is a sufficient vindication of the writer, if 
 history furnishes one parallel fact." A mind so ignorant of art 
 as not to feel instinctively the need of probability, seldom ac 
 quires the principle. But in a letter to his brother James, who 
 appears to have been a sound and persevering critic, he wrote 
 in 1800, "Your remarks upon the gloominess and out-of- 
 nature incidents of Huntly, if they be not just in their full ex 
 tent, are, doubtless, such as most readers will make, which 
 alone is a sufficient reason for dropping the doleful tone and 
 assuming a cheerful one, or, at least, substituting moral causes 
 and daily incidents in place of the prodigious and singular. 
 I shall not fall hereafter into that strain." 
 
 His was the realism of the journalist. He had an instinct 
 for head-lines, with the gruesome details diagramed and il 
 lustrated. From this trait came his general inability to depict 
 character. We find his art described by its opposite in the 
 delightful plea Mr. Howells makes for his beloved realism, 
 that "character resides in habit," and that "for the novelist 
 to seek its expression in violent events would be as stupid as 
 for the painter to expect an alarm of fire or burglary to startle 
 his sitter into a valuable revelation of his qualities." 
 
 But in Brockden Brown s time the burglar and the fire 
 alarm had their charms. 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 
 
 COOPER is the great story-teller of American literature. He 
 was the first American to make a world-wide appeal, and to 
 this day he is one of the few who have taken and held a high 
 rank in the esteem of other nations. No single book of his has 
 had the universal popularity of Uncle Tom s Cabin , but on the 
 other hand that novel was not equaled by any other work of 
 its author, nor was its success due entirely to its value as a 
 story; whereas the Leatherstocking Tales belong to world 
 literature, and owe their immortality to the sheer delight they 
 give. Their recognition was as immediate and generous as 
 the welcome accorded the Waverley Novels, to whose author 
 Cooper is often compared. Perhaps the highest praise the 
 American ever received was from the author of Henry Es 
 mond, who knew what was to be known about great novels; 
 in the Roundabout Paper entitled "On a Peal of Bells" 
 Thackeray follows a description of Scott s heroes with these 
 words: "Much as I like those unassuming, manly, unpre 
 tending gentlemen, I have to own that I think the heroes 
 of another writer, viz : Leatherstocking, Uncas, Hardheart, 
 Tom Coffin, are quite the equals of Scott s men; perhaps 
 Leatherstocking is better than any one in Scott s Lot. La 
 Longue Carabine is one of the great prizemen of fiction. He 
 ranks with your Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de Coverley, Fal- 
 staff heroic figures, all American or British, and the artist 
 has deserved well of his country who devised them." 
 
 However well he deserved, Cooper received little from his 
 
 51 
 
52 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 country in proportion to what he gave. Partly through his 
 own fault, his career, though one of the most conspicuous, 
 was one of the least honored in our literature. And since his 
 death, when the common judgment of his personality has 
 become kindlier, types of fiction more subtle than the story of 
 adventure have led the fashion, and Cooper s novels have 
 been in some measure consigned to the juvenile department of 
 literature. Although the best criticism has lately been once 
 more appreciative of the novelist who is not ashamed to tell 
 an out-and-out story, who makes pretension to neither style 
 nor wickedness, and never heard of the psychological or socio 
 logical problem, yet the admirer of Cooper, like the admirer of 
 Scott, has still something of a case to prove; he has still a plea 
 to make for that old-fashioned sanity which to the red-pepper 
 palate of to-day is dullness; he must still set up the claims of a 
 great imagination over against modern literary dexterity; and 
 he must explain why the public honor that was Cooper s due 
 was turned into public abuse, why even to-day his greatness 
 as a man is forgotten. For Cooper, in spite of his faults, was 
 really a great man. He stands detached from his books, like 
 Scott, a strong personality. He was one of the least provin 
 cial of American authors, and one of the most thoughtful, if 
 not one of the wisest, of American citizens. For more than 
 literary services he deserves well of his country. 
 
 He was born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 
 1789. His father, Judge William Cooper, came of a Quaker 
 family, who had settled in New Jersey a century before; his 
 mother, Elizabeth Fenimore, was of Swedish descent. There 
 were twelve children, of whom James was the eleventh. He 
 got his middle name by dropping the hyphen in Fenimore- 
 Cooper, the form to which the family name was changed in 
 1826, by act of legislature. 
 
 At the close of the Revolution the elder Cooper bought a 
 large estate in New York, on the shore of Otsego Lake. A 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 53 
 
 year before the novelist s birth he laid out what was to be the 
 village of Cooperstown, and two years later, when the child 
 was thirteen months old, the family removed to their new 
 home in the wilderness. It was from his father, apparently, 
 that the novelist inherited what were called his aristocratic 
 tastes his admiration for the manners of a traditional so 
 ciety, and here in the quickly gathering frontier settlement 
 those tastes were strangely fostered; for his father built a pre 
 tentious house, and made himself, with considerable success, 
 as it were the lord of the manor, dispensing hospitality and 
 exercising a superior influence, as became the first gentleman 
 of that region. The son passed his childhood under the in 
 fluence of such a home, and as far as he could know, under 
 such traditions. It would seem fitting to him that the exiled 
 Talleyrand should visit his father s house; it would be natural 
 in later years for the famous novelist to feel at home in the 
 undemocratic society of the Old World, to the great scandal 
 of his fellow-countrymen. 
 
 At the same time the childhood in Cooperstown developed 
 in him that love of democracy which seemed to his enemies, 
 considering his conservative tastes, paradoxical if not in 
 sincere. The little settlement contained men of every nation 
 ality and condition, but alike adventurous and hardy, or they 
 would not have been there at all. What more delicious para 
 dise could the heart of boyhood conceive, than this fellow 
 ship, on the very border of the mysterious forests, with hun 
 ters and woodsmen and trappers! The necessary roughness 
 of the life which from his earliest memory he saw outside his 
 father s house, had its own charm for one who was by tem 
 perament a man of action, and it developed in him that true 
 valuing of the elemental in human nature which makes the 
 democrat. Together with his love of a patrician mode of life, 
 such as the North could rarely boast in his time, went always 
 this other love of sturdy manhood. This dual interest was 
 
54 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 paralleled in Scott s life : and had Cooper but enjoyed also Sir 
 Walter s genius for showing brotherly love in gracious con 
 duct, he might to-day be similarly honored in the memory of 
 his own people. 
 
 It is perhaps to be regretted that there is no record of 
 Cooper s boyhood beyond what little he himself told, and 
 what can be inferred from his matured character and his 
 books. Undoubtedly the subtlest and perhaps the strongest 
 influence of those years was nature, as it lay about him. 
 Those particular regions, that peculiarly American land 
 scape, took hold of him in a way quite unmatched in our liter 
 ature perhaps new in modern literature. If we had the 
 inner record of his childhood we might find that he was as 
 reflective and poetical as the American novelists have charac 
 teristically been. He had a poet s eye for the outward world, 
 unsupported by the romance of human interests, and therein 
 he differed from Scott. Apart from the moving accident by 
 flood and field, which is his theme, Cooper paints indelible 
 memories of the shadowy forests, the infrequent clearings, 
 the crystal lake, with the pines and the heavens clear in its 
 bosom. The pictures contain no other mystery than their 
 own beauty; Cooper was guilty of no French sentimentalism 
 over a savage world, nor was he in the slightest degree, as 
 critics have pointed out, a Wordsworthian. He looked on the 
 wild panorama with the detachment of a Greek, but in place 
 of the ancient awe he felt the love of nature. It was in these 
 scenes of his boyhood that he laid his greatest stories, be 
 cause, as he said, he loved no other scenes so well. 
 
 The village of Cooperstown boasted a school, and there the 
 future novelist had his introduction to learning. But the ad 
 vantages of frontier scholarship proved limited, and he was 
 soon sent to Albany, as a private pupil of the rector of St. 
 Peter s Church. In this gentleman s household he first came 
 in contact with those contemptuous English opinions of Amer- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 55 
 
 ica, which in mature life roused his anger against the mother 
 country; at the same time he learned from his English tutor 
 Old World ideals of an established society and a traditional 
 church, which fitted well with his patrician tastes. In 1802, 
 on the death of his teacher, he entered the class of 1806, in 
 Yale College. He was then thirteen years old. His residence 
 at Yale lasted somewhat over two years. What little instruc 
 tion the college could impart in those days, he managed to 
 avoid, nor did he find an equivalent in the familiar resort of 
 v/ayward genius wide general reading. He occupied his 
 active mind partly with the enjoyment of nature, and more 
 largely with mischief; as a natural result he was dismissed 
 from college. 
 
 It has often been observed, justly, that Cooper and Amer 
 ican literature suffered severely from his lack of systematic 
 training. His was a nature that could have profited from 
 mental discipline, and the little he ever had was limited to his 
 days in the rectory of St. Peter s. He had no hobbies or 
 amusements, as Scott had, to take the place of academic 
 training; he was neither a historian nor an antiquarian, he 
 was not even a great reader. And as if to complete his separa 
 tion from books, that natural school for his future art, he was 
 sent to sea in 1806, on the Sterling, a merchant vessel bound 
 for England and Spain. The long voyage of a year gave him 
 his first acquaintance with that ocean world he was to picture 
 with unique skill, and in particular he was fascinated by the 
 storms, which were unusually numerous and violent during 
 his first trip. 
 
 This voyage had been intended as a preparation for his 
 entering the navy. Accordingly he was commissioned mid 
 shipman on January i, 1808, and entered active service seven 
 weeks later. Little is known accurately of his movements 
 during the next few years. Curiously enough his most im 
 portant duties were assigned on those frontier waters which 
 
LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 could not have seemed strange to him after his boyhood on 
 Otsego Lake: he was sent to Lake Ontario in 1808 to assist in 
 building a brig of sixteen guns, to be used in a possible war 
 against England. The great lake and its shores he later em 
 bodied in the scenery of The Pathfinder. The next year, 1809, 
 he was for a short time in command of the gunboats on Lake 
 Champlain. The following winter he was on the Wasp, com 
 manded by Lawrence, the future hero of the Chesapeake. A 
 year later, January i, 1811, his naval career ended with his 
 marriage to a Miss De Lancey, at Mamaroneck, Westchester 
 County, New York. His resignation from the navy was ac 
 cepted the following May. 
 
 The family into which he had married were originally of 
 Huguenot stock. His bride s father had fought on the Brit 
 ish side in the Revolutionary war, and the family home was 
 in the aristocratic Tory section, within the influence of the 
 British armies. Affection for his wife undoubtedly was the 
 chief reason for Cooper s just treatment of the Tories in his 
 novels, but perhaps some credit should be given to his natural 
 sympathy in general with the stately society that had held 
 with the crown. Whatever he may have thought of the 
 Tories originally, it should be remembered that before The 
 Spy was written he had lived in Westchester County for six 
 years, the only time in his life that he was subjected to those 
 combined influences of history and landscape that made 
 Scott s romance; and his own life as a country gentleman 
 perhaps brought back and explained to him the point of view 
 of the aristocrats before the Revolution. 
 
 For a year or so after his marriage Cooper lived at his 
 father-in-law s home. After a second year in a rented house 
 near by, he returned to Cooperstown in 1814, began to build 
 a large home, and evidently intended to duplicate, as gentle 
 man proprietor of the estate, the honored history of his father, 
 who had died in 1809. But as his wife was discontented with 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 57 
 
 the frontier, he returned to Westchester in 1817, and settled 
 in Scarsdale. 
 
 II 
 
 Here in 1820 Cooper began his literary career by the in 
 spiration of the merest chance. Having read a contemporary 
 English novel which seemed to him rather poor, with charac 
 teristic self-confidence he remarked that he could write as 
 good a book himself. The boast was carried out, though 
 whether the novel he read could have been worse than the 
 one he wrote, is fairly debatable. This first venture, Precau 
 tion^ is sometimes treated with seriousness as an index to 
 Cooper s qualities both as a writer and as a man, and in the 
 limited respect that anything a man does, even chopping 
 wood, may indicate his character, the view is not untenable. 
 But the circumstances of composition and the subject-matter 
 of the book prevented Cooper from showing a single spark of 
 his genius, and his own judgment of his prentice work is the 
 correct one that it was altogether unworthy. He afterward 
 realized the error of choosing an English plot, laid in English 
 scenes he had not visited, and in a society he knew only from 
 other novels; if he chose such a subject, not only in imitation 
 of the model he had promised to excel, but with the knowl 
 edge that a volume of dukes and earls would satisfy a vulgar 
 public, it is easy to understand the trouble his conscience gave 
 him when his friends said it would have been more patriotic 
 to write of American life ; it was the charge of disloyalty that 
 he felt, rather than a distinct consciousness that his theme 
 was not one for his peculiar genius. The English country 
 life in Precaution might have been treated with Miss Aus 
 ten s exquisite satire, or with Trollope s emotional vigor; but 
 Cooper was neither exquisite nor a satirist, and he lacked en 
 tirely the reflective penetration to reach the emotional crises 
 of conventional lives. In the novel the Moseleys and Chat- 
 
58 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 tertons and Ives are occupied with nothing more critical than 
 gossip and prearranged marriages, with a suspicion of a 
 villain threatening to enliven the story, and throughout the 
 dialogue a display of far more worldly wisdom than the nar 
 row lives of the speakers can permit them to test in practice. 
 The book made no impression in America, but in England it 
 was received with complacence, as it was supposed to be by a 
 British author. 
 
 Among his other resemblances to Scott, Cooper had great 
 tenacity of purpose, and he was too sincere a critic not to 
 realize that he had fallen somewhat short of his boast; in ad 
 dition, as has been said, he was troubled by the charge of lit 
 erary disloyalty to his country. Accordingly he began an 
 other story at once, determined to atone for his shortcomings, 
 and on December 22, 1821, The Spy, his first great novel, 
 was published in New York. He tells the history of the book 
 in the dignified preface to a later edition in 1849. He had 
 heard the experiences of a revolutionary spy, the original of 
 Harvey Birch, and when the English quality of Precaution be 
 came a reproach to him, and he had chosen patriotism for the 
 theme of a second book, the subject of which, as he says, 
 should admit of no cavil, the tale of the spy naturally came to 
 mind, and expanded itself into the famous plot. So much in 
 tention and care there was in the preparation of the novel; but 
 Cooper tells an anecdote of its composition which not only 
 illustrates the hopes of an American author in the first part 
 of the nineteenth century, but also indicates that his crafts 
 manship, like Scott s, was haphazard. The first volume of 
 the novel was in print several months before a line of the 
 second was written. "As the second volume was slowly 
 printing, from manuscript that was barely dry when it went 
 into the compositor s hands, the publisher intimated that it 
 might grow to a length that would consume the profits. To 
 set his mind at rest, the last chapter was actually written, 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 59 
 
 printed, and paged several weeks before the chapters that 
 precede it were even thought of." 
 
 Cooper began Precaution with the simple resolve to write a 
 novel. He began The Spy with the same resolve; but it was 
 of immense advantage that he built it upon a legend already 
 in his mind. His was the genius of the true story-teller, to 
 whom inspiration comes in the form of plot rather than as an 
 idea. He would have been as puzzled as Homer himself at 
 the doctrine of the modern novelist that character is plot. His 
 genius comprehended few subtleties, but he had the rarest of 
 gifts, the ability to unfold a tale that happens before our eyes, 
 and which seems to have been true always. The difference 
 between Cooper fumbling with the vague problem of writing 
 an English novel of manners better than an Englishman, and 
 Cooper with the true task of his genius, telling a story of ad 
 venture, affords one of the astonishing contrasts of literary 
 history. From such a germ of plot as he now had to start 
 with, he could always draw a fable to hold men from the 
 chimney-corner, as Hawthorne s thought could blossom from 
 a symbol; but without such a germ of action Cooper s genius 
 was crippled, in more novels than his first. 
 
 The Spy grows from the history of one who served the 
 Colonies in the Revolution by pretending to be in the British 
 service. None but Washington knew his true character, and 
 the deception was so thorough that the American troops more 
 than once caught him, and all but succeeded in hanging him. 
 At the end of the war Congress learned of his faithfulness, and 
 voted him a sum of money, but he refused all recompense, 
 having suffered peril and ignominy out of pure love of coun 
 try. The patriotism of the character is what first appealed to 
 Cooper; it is interesting, however, to trace the story-teller s 
 instinct as it enlarged on the original sketch. The refusal of 
 a reward is made more remarkable by portraying Harvey 
 Birch by nature or force of circumstances a miser. The fact 
 
60 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 that he is in mortal danger from the countrymen he is serving, 
 comes home with more tragic force through the portrait of his 
 dying father, whom Harvey s heroic disguise has brought to 
 disgrace and a pauper s death-bed; his father s need also ex 
 plains, in part at least, Harvey s greed for gold. He is an out 
 cast for his patriotism, but by nature, as Cooper is careful to 
 show, he loves home life and gentle society; and the pathos of 
 his resolve to leave a dishonored name to no children of his 
 own, is further set off with effective irony by Katy Haynes 
 wish to marry him Katy being the person she is. All this 
 misery which Cooper naturally imagined for his spy, he turns 
 to fine account by portraying Harvey without a heroic trait, 
 save his one master purpose, and even his patriotism has be 
 come through too prolonged suffering less a thing of passion 
 than of duty; he has neither mental ability nor personal prow 
 ess, and were it not for his strong will, he would show him 
 self a coward. The character illustrates at once what has 
 been thought Cooper s most remarkable gift, a perfect blend 
 of romance and realism. Harvey s dangers and escapes are 
 not less thrilling than those of the more heroic Rob Roy, yet 
 while the page is still before him the reader sees no legendary 
 glamor over Harvey himself; so actual does he seem, with his 
 limitations and virtues, that the novel has often been mis 
 taken for biography. Harvey also illustrates, as does Leather- 
 stocking, Cooper s felicity in fixing a story upon a definite 
 region, literally giving it a local habitation. This was Ir- 
 ving s great fortune too; 1819, the year of The Sketch Book, 
 and 1821, the year of The Spy, gave American landscape, 
 except for the Leatherstocking Tales, the only well-known 
 legends it owns to this day. 
 
 The individuality of Harvey Birch is greater because he 
 has no parallel in Cooper s writings. It is not surprising that 
 he is sometimes mentioned with Leatherstocking and Long 
 Tom Coffin, for like them he is the ultra-romantic hero of the 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 61 
 
 novel he appears in, and like them is set apart from the sur 
 rounding characters in a peculiar isolation, more marked than 
 the somewhat similar distinction of Rob Roy or Robin Hood. 
 But in detail he has nothing in common with any of these 
 heroes, principally, as has been said, because he is in the 
 personal sense not a hero at all. And he has none of the phi 
 losophy, the zest in life, the self-completeness, that are car 
 dinal traits in Natty Bumppo and Long Tom. They have 
 outward experiences, adventures of life and death, but they 
 come before the reader with their minds from the beginning 
 in the peace of an un-Byronic stoicism; Harvey Birch s suffer 
 ings are more of the mind than of the body, and his adven 
 tures have always the double interest of an outward and in 
 ward conflict. And whereas the isolation of Leatherstocking 
 and Long Tom seems all-sufficient, as though they could have 
 neither forefathers nor descendants, Harvey s loneliness is 
 inherited from his race, in some inequality of power to aspira 
 tion; his dying father saw within the son that which would 
 make him a pilgrim through life, and seemed to recognize it 
 as the extension of his own destiny. 
 
 Whatever was his courage when he undertook his desperate 
 career, Harvey shows little bravery after he has become a 
 hunted outlaw. He is almost a coward, if the name cowardice 
 can describe dread of a traitor s death, made terribly real on 
 many a page. Indeed, the fear of hanging is a main theme in 
 the story in Major Andre s fate, and in the adventures of 
 Captain Wharton, of Harvey, and of the miserable Skinner. 
 The hanging of the Skinner, powerfully described in the last 
 pages of the book, not only gets rid of the villain, but justifies 
 in Captain Wharton and Harvey the fear of death, which the 
 frequent escapes and rescues had made seem somewhat vague 
 and unreal. With the terrible fascination of the Skinner s 
 death Harvey s cowardice is, as it were, expiated. When he 
 dies honorably on the field of battle in the War of 1812, his 
 
62 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 better self, his patriotism, has become a kind of mania, and 
 with this passion blends a jealous pride in Washington s ex 
 oneration of his character. For the conventional conclusions 
 of that curiously written last chapter Cooper might make 
 apologies, but he was always singularly happy in imagining 
 the old age of his best characters, and the convincing fitness 
 of Harvey Birch s end could not be bettered. 
 
 The Spy is usually reckoned among historical novels, 
 though strictly speaking there is no history in it. As a nov 
 elist Cooper has little interest in history for its own sake, nor 
 for the elevation of the plot by testing the fictitious charac 
 ters in the crucible of great historic crises. Those aspects 
 of history which in the novel have to do with panorama, 
 and, strangely enough, with action, Cooper usually neglects; 
 though his genius is for the story of adventure, he had neither 
 the interest in the past nor the scholarship to include a series 
 of actual events in his romance. He goes to history only for 
 the picturesque setting of past time. So in The Spy, though 
 much that is told might have happened, and though the whole 
 book has the air of history, none of it is historical in the same 
 sense as the great episodes in Kenilworth or The Abbot. But 
 Cooper had a genuine gift for historical portraiture. In The 
 Spy he presented that picture of Washington which has 
 seemed most authentic to the popular imagination. The be 
 nevolence and aristocratic reserve which distinguish the great 
 patriot in tradition are here set forth with the conviction 
 Cooper always gives to the characters he cares for; and if he 
 himself showed in his later career a lack of tact and manner, 
 he might vindicate his breeding by this picture, as fine a 
 conception of gentleman as Thackeray himself could give. 
 
 The women in The Spy are on the whole as well imagined 
 as any in Cooper s writing, and with the forbearance of 
 Professor Lounsbury and other severe critics of Cooper s 
 " females," this is no slight praise. At their worst Cooper s 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 63 
 
 heroines are unspeakable, but at their best they need no apol 
 ogies. In this novel the objection of sentimentality or over- 
 propriety is removed by the naturalness of the plot, which ac 
 counts satisfactorily for the traits in the ladies characters that 
 might otherwise seem excessive. Miss Jeanette Peyton, the 
 mouthpiece of that social correctness from which no Cooper 
 heroine ever escapes, is more acceptable because she cherishes 
 her own dignified romance, and because Mr. Wharton, the 
 head of the house, himself stands in no less dread of the pro 
 prieties; her character is made natural by the modes of thought 
 about her. Sarah Wharton, the older niece, resembles her 
 aunt so strongly that her idealization of Colonel Wellmere and 
 the dignity with which she bears her disappointment are easily 
 understood. The generous spirit of Frances shows her re 
 semblance to her brother; she is as impulsive, as true, and 
 as proud as he; it is to her, though she sides with the con 
 tinentals, that he naturally turns, rather than to Sarah, who 
 like him is loyal to the King. As the elder Wharton helps to 
 explain Miss Peyton s character, so the son interprets the 
 devotion of Frances to Dunwoodie; otherwise their love story 
 might have been a mawkish affair, as they were betrothed 
 at the very beginning of the book. Like Scott, Cooper tells 
 no love story for its own sake, and generally he leaves it in the 
 background, as a graceful incident, when time serves. But 
 in The Spy the relation of Frances and Dunwoodie becomes 
 vitally important, when Captain Wharton is captured as a 
 spy by his future brother-in-law; whatever sentimentality 
 there is in the situation is lost in the melodramatic interest. 
 Miss Singleton stands somewhat apart from the story, the 
 pathetic victim of love and fate; it is from her that modern 
 sympathy has been furthest withdrawn by the changing 
 fashions of thought; in the sentimental vogue which lasted 
 well into Mrs. Stowe s work, she is the typical victim of life, 
 beautiful and innocent, and cherishing a secret passion. Of 
 
64 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 course she must die prematurely, not only because that is the 
 fate of the type, but because she is somewhat in the way. Her 
 death by the bullet of the Skinner who is shooting at Lawton, 
 makes it possible to hang the Skinner later with the reader s 
 cordial approval. The thorough contrivance of the plot is 
 further made clear by a comparison of Mrs. Stowe s summary 
 method of disposing of her condemned heroines, Eva or Nina 
 or Mara, with Cooper s careful preparation which makes 
 perfectly natural the Skinner s attempt to kill Lawton and 
 his accidental killing of Miss Singleton. 
 
 Maria Edgeworth praised the character of the Irish woman, 
 Betty Flanagan, saying that the portrait could not have been 
 bettered by an Irish writer. She is one of the best minor 
 characters Cooper created, for he developed later a tendency 
 to slight the unimportant persons in his narrative, unless he 
 had a special interest in them. In this instance he imagined 
 a genuinely funny character, and humor, as his hastiest 
 reader knows, is not usually his strength. 
 
 Dr. Sitgreaves, the surgeon, belongs to a type Cooper must 
 have loved, for they are represented in almost every novel. 
 Some of the novelist s critics call the whole series " bores," 
 using the word for both classification and description. It 
 would be fairer to call them pedants, for invariably their in 
 firmity is absorption in some department of knowledge. Dr. 
 Sitgreaves inclines to the tedious when he continues to plead 
 with Lawton for a more scientific sabering of the enemy; aside 
 from this Dickens-like tag of his personality he is less unat 
 tractive than most of the type, and his humor, though un 
 conscious, is not slight. 
 
 Well-made as is the plot of The Spy, and convincing as the 
 characters are, the book leaves a strong final impression of 
 two other qualities the distinctness of the scene, and the 
 rapid movements within it. It is remarkable that the plan of 
 the fight, for example, should be so easily comprehended, 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 65 
 
 considering the confusion of the field ; not less distinct to the 
 mind is the location of Wharton s last prison and the secret 
 hut on the mountain. And the distinctness of the scene is not 
 interfered with by the rapid movements of the soldiers and 
 the Spy and the Skinners, nor by the two splendid chases that 
 for some of us were the most exciting reading of our boyhood. 
 Only an opulent genius could have described two such pur 
 suits under circumstances so nearly identical; but whenever 
 the situation involves rapid physical motion, Cooper has no 
 superior in English, perhaps in any literature. His boy read 
 ers learn to look for the race or pursuit in every novel, know 
 ing it will probably be the best moment of the story. 
 
 Cooper s fame is so linked with the Leatherstocking Tales 
 that it is natural to look upon The Spy as a sort of practice 
 piece for his more typical work. In comparison with that 
 unique series it undoubtedly suffers, simply because it belongs 
 hi a well-filled compartment of the novel, and many of its 
 fellows in the class are world masterpieces. But among the 
 historical novels of adventure it takes a high place, quite 
 the highest place among American historical novels. Its 
 popularity has been continued, as it was immediate. It was 
 the first American novel to win the respect of the generally 
 contemptuous English critics, and the American press, which 
 had liked the book by instinct, was pleased with the mild 
 praise, as though it were a national tribute. It would not 
 have been surprising if the subject of the story had prejudiced 
 English readers in those years of wounded feelings. After 
 some difficulty an English publisher was found, in the man 
 who had brought out The Sketch Book. In 1822 The Spy was 
 translated into French, and afterward into most of the other 
 European languages. Cooper had accomplished his purpose ; 
 he had written a novel on the theme of American patriotism, 
 with American scenes and American characters, and with the 
 minimum obligation to the old country that a man of culture 
 
66 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 could owe; and the book had been welcomed by the civilized 
 world. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The reception of The Spy naturally gave Cooper confidence 
 in his powers, yet he began his next story with no false hopes; 
 he did not realize as yet what was his natural vein, and his 
 attitude toward his art was still experimental. His success, 
 however, had given him a certain right to choose his subject 
 without regard to the feelings of others, and having celebrated 
 his country in general, he decided to describe the scenes of his 
 childhood . The resolve was made out of pure love of Coopers- 
 town and the lake, for he was too good a critic not to foresee, 
 as he says, that elaborate descriptions such as he purposed 
 would endanger the narrative interest. When The Pioneers 
 was published, in 1823, the eagerness with which it was 
 awaited and welcomed gave proof of the genuine success of 
 The Spy, and of virtue in the new story more than the author 
 had dared to hope. He had written it, as he declared in a 
 somewhat pugnacious preface, to please himself; but the 
 thirty-five hundred copies disposed of in the first half-day s 
 sale indicated that the public had not quarreled with his taste. 
 
 The Pioneers stands fourth in the complete cycle of the 
 Leatherstocking Tales, but being actually written first, it 
 has an added interest as illustrating the growth of his great 
 frontier characters in Cooper s mind. The scenery and the 
 general society of the novel were transcripts from his boy 
 hood memories; the home of Marmaduke Templeton seems 
 to have been a less accurate reproduction of his father s house. 
 From this first novel as a document of his own life he later ex 
 panded and elaborated the Leatherstocking series, much as 
 he had evolved Harvey Birch from the anecdote of a Revolu 
 tionary spy. It is little to be wondered at, therefore, that The 
 Pioneers is in general far more crude than the later refine- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 67 
 
 ments upon it; but it has singular merits, too often unrecog 
 nized. Cooper s realism is severely tested by this theme; the 
 author who wished to set his country honorably before for 
 eign readers, who wished to immortalize the home he loved 
 best, might have found pardon for some rose-tinted exaggera 
 tion. But the story presents the unsoftened outlines of the 
 new settlement, its pretensions to architecture and ceremony, 
 the ignorance and recklessness of its inhabitants, the demo 
 cratic confusion of its society. Cooper s Americanism, loyal 
 as it was, never blinded him to the faults unavoidable in so 
 new a country, and no later writer has portrayed with more 
 merciless severity the meddlesome, officious sheriff, the quack 
 physician who learns his profession by observing the results 
 of his practice, the disreputable lawyer, and the incompetent 
 builder. No single figure in the story escapes altogether the 
 suspicion and pity inherent in such thorough realism; even 
 Leatherstocking is here somewhat vulgar and narrow -brained, 
 with none of the philosophy and dignity he exhibits in The 
 Deerslayer or The Prairie. All the adventurous spirits that 
 hold this outpost of civilization have some blight upon them, 
 so that the reader half questions whether Cooper considers 
 them social explorers or derelicts. Even the amusing Betty 
 Flanagan, who lives on from The Spy as the wife of Ser 
 geant Hollister, and who keeps the Bold Dragoon Inn, named 
 in memory of Captain Lawton, is more canny and less impul 
 sive than in her Revolutionary days. 
 
 Cooper described this society with such realism because he 
 knew it perfectly; it may be doubted if he ever knew any other 
 society so well. It was the school in which his youthful mind 
 had learned democracy, and perhaps he owed to it, with good 
 reason, the disillusioned suspicion of human nature which 
 colors both his works and his life, and which has been charged 
 against Americans as a national trait. It was not to such a 
 communitv no matter what its good qualities, that the poetry 
 
68 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 in Cooper s temperament responded, but to the charm of the 
 wilderness which the community had invaded. A settlement 
 like Cooperstown represented to him, as to any good citizen, 
 a necessary intermediate condition between the savage life of 
 the forest and the civilized life of culture; but however much 
 he approved of the end, his heart went back to the unspoiled 
 woods. Apparently this was his interest in nature from his 
 boyhood ; his earliest dreams must have been of such pano 
 ramas as Marmaduke Temple beheld when he first came to his 
 uncleared estate. The point is worth dwelling on; for the at 
 traction of the Leatherstocking Tales is largely in the ideal 
 ization of the disappearing wilderness, the pathos, as the old 
 hunter felt, of the clearings and "improvements," of the 
 wasted timber and slaughtered game. Cooper reserves his 
 realism for human nature; the poet in him delights in the 
 woods and streams. Because Leatherstocking and Indian 
 John in this first novel were connected with this saddened 
 romance of nature, they were transfigured in the popular 
 imagination with all the poetry that Cooper, learning by the 
 popular hint, later bestowed upon them. 
 
 Cooper s next story, like The Spy, took its inspiration from 
 a random motive. Before the publication of The Pioneers he 
 had attended a dinner at which the authorship of The Pirate, 
 Scott s latest novel, was discussed. A gentleman present con 
 tended that Scott could not have written it, since he did not 
 possess a knowledge of seamanship so minute as it showed. 
 Cooper s naval experience led him to observe at once that 
 The Pirate showed very little knowledge of seamanship on the 
 part of its author, and that therefore Scott might well have 
 written it. Cooper did not convince his hearers, but the dis 
 cussion directed his own thoughts to the ocean as an unworked 
 realm of romance. He acted upon the idea with characteris 
 tic energy, and The Pilot, the first great sea story, appeared 
 in 1824. It bore the date of the preceding year, but its pub- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 69 
 
 lication had been delayed by the death of the author s son, 
 Fenimore. 
 
 The Pilot is a tale of adventure at sea, but it also develops 
 the theme of patriotism begun in The Spy, and to the same 
 extent as The Spy it is an historical novel. It records no 
 event of history, but it imagines the historical atmosphere, as 
 the earlier novel had done, and it portrays one authentic 
 person, Paul Jones, as The Spy had included a portrait of 
 Washington. The materials of the story lent themselves to 
 the most thoroughgoing romance, the achievements of the 
 American navy were among the country s proudest legends; 
 the personality of Paul Jones was as mysteriously adventu 
 rous as the ocean itself; and the cause of liberty, ennobling 
 the story above any other sea tale, identified itself poetically 
 with the freedom of the great waters. The ocean also made 
 possible more exciting chases than the land, and Cooper s 
 genius for that kind of episode is at its best in the escape of the 
 frigate from the shoals, and its battle with the English three- 
 decker. In these manceuvers Cooper was exploiting the 
 seamanship which The Pirate lacked, but no reader would 
 suspect any other interest than the adventure itself, the genu 
 ineness of the excitement is so little interfered with by the tech 
 nical purpose. 
 
 Scott had represented the ocean from the landsman s point 
 of view, as a thing of terror. In reproducing the sailor s 
 world Cooper had to show the preference for the deep sea and 
 the actual fear of the coast. By laying his plot off the shores 
 of Scotland he is enabled to bring his heroines naturally into 
 the story, and what is more essential, he can introduce almost 
 the only danger that belongs peculiarly to the water. The 
 first scene of the story makes the reader fearful for the strange 
 vessels so near the coast; the peril is brought home by the 
 frigate s narrow escape from the rocks; and the wreck of the 
 Ariel, a scene of unusual energy and grandeur, even for 
 
70 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Cooper, completes the tragedy, and by implication, gives 
 the measure of the pilot s skill in saving the larger vessel. 
 And in the portrayal of such moments of danger the author 
 found opportunity to put the seaman s point of view into pic 
 turesque phrase, as in the conversation between Barnstable 
 and Long Tom Coffin, under the cliff: "This is just such a 
 place as one of your sighing lovers would dote on; a little land, 
 a little water, and a good deal of rock. Damme, Long Tom, 
 but I am more than half of your mind, that an island now and 
 then is all the terra firma that a seaman needs." 
 
 "It s reason and philosophy, sir," returned the sedate 
 cockswain; "and what land there is should always be a soft 
 mud, or a sandy ooze, in order that an anchor might hold, and 
 to make soundings sartin." 
 
 By laying the plot of his sea story near land Cooper has an 
 additional advantage in the resulting complication of the in 
 cidents. The excitement of the storms and the fights would 
 hardly sustain the interest through a whole novel, and the best 
 episodes of The Pilot are occasioned by the movements on 
 land. The treachery of Dillon leads to practically all the ad 
 ventures except the first escape of the frigate from the shoals; 
 he sends the expresses by land which bring the gunshot from 
 the fort, fatally maiming the Ariel, and which summon the 
 English fleet for the last battle with the frigate; and his re 
 capture by Long Tom, under the very eyes of the Abbey 
 guard, is not the least sensational adventure in the story. 
 
 The character that gives the book its title differs strongly 
 from any Cooper had yet drawn, though it is repeated with 
 variations in his later sea tales. Paul Jones, as Cooper 
 imagines him, is no such idealization of romance as Leather- 
 stocking, nor such a hero as he is in popular memory. 
 Cooper represents him as an adventurer, whose remarkable 
 ability for the time was used for the cause of liberty, but whose 
 motives were not altogether noble; vanity weighs with him 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 71 
 
 more than patriotism, of which indeed he has none, since he 
 owns no country, and he would serve a flattering tyrant as 
 quickly as he would the Continental Congress. It is surpris 
 ing that Cooper can make so much of a hero he has so little 
 sympathy for; in the comments of Barnstable, and in the 
 meetings of Paul Jones and Alice Dunscombe, it is perfectly 
 evident that the Scotch fighter did not meet the author s 
 measure of a great man. As a character, the pilot is most 
 effective on the first reading of the story, while the mystery in 
 which he delights gives its own interest ; on a second or third 
 reading he becomes a little tiresome. Except at sea, and then 
 only in moments of extreme peril, he is hardly a man of ac 
 tion; he seems paralyzed by some hidden griefs, that remain 
 hidden, and at times his behavior is childish if not unbal 
 anced, as when he gives incorrect and unintelligible answers 
 to Boltrope s hail, on approaching the Alacrity, and then 
 boards the cutter with a "proud and angry eye," because he 
 has not been recognized. What saves him to the sympathy of 
 the reader is the efficiency he does show in moments of ex 
 treme peril, and the private romance that dignifies and ex 
 cuses his foibles by its unmistakable note of tragedy. His 
 skill is employed not for his own profit, nor even for his fame; 
 and when Griffith and Barnstable carry off their rescued 
 loves to the frigate, the pilot loses Alice forever. 
 
 A large part of his behavior might be called Byronic, since 
 it appears to be learned in the general school of the Giaour and 
 the Corsair. For the most part Cooper is too healthy minded 
 to be influenced by the more mawkish currents of Byronism, 
 but here, as in The Red Rover, the secret past of the chief fig 
 ure pursues him like a fury, and especially induces moods 
 of irrelevant abstraction just when a clear, decided mind is 
 needed. The pilot has a way of folding his arms and gazing 
 into space at the precise moment when the captain or some 
 other officer has asked for the instructions that are to save or 
 
72 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 lose the ship. And these theatrical attitudes come so often 
 that it is easy to understand his slight popularity with the 
 crew. It is hard to see why Cooper so represented Paul Jones, 
 as he shows clearly, in the disgust of Griffith and Barnstable 
 for such sentimentalism, that he knows how the average man 
 would criticize the pilot. Yet the trait is unmistakable, even 
 exaggerated. When the frigate was in the shoals and the 
 captain suggested heaving the lead, Paul Jones "head rested 
 on his hand as he leaned over the hammock-cloth of the 
 vessel, and his whole air was that of one whose thoughts 
 wandered from the pressing necessities of their situation. 
 Griffith was among those who had approached the pilot; and 
 after v/aiting a moment, from respect, to hear the answer to 
 his commander s question, he presumed on his own rank, and 
 leaving the circle that stood at a little distance, stepped to the 
 side of the mysterious guardian of their lives. 
 
 " Captain Munson desires to know whether you wish a cast 
 of the lead ? said the young officer, with a little impatience of 
 manner. No immediate answer was made to this repetition 
 of the question, and Griffith laid his hand unceremoniously 
 on the shoulder of the other, with an intent to rouse him be 
 fore he made another application for a reply, but the con 
 vulsive start of the pilot held him silent in amazement. 
 * ###***# 
 
 " l This is not a time for musing, Mr. Gray/ continued 
 Griffith; remember our compact, and look to your charge 
 is it not time to put the vessel in stays? Of what are you 
 dreaming ? 
 
 "The pilot laid his hand on the extended arm of the lieu 
 tenant, and grasped it with a convulsive pressure, as he an 
 swered : 
 
 " Tis a dream of reality. You are young, Mr. Griffith, 
 nor am I past the noon of life ; but, should you live fifty years 
 longer, you can never see and experience what I have en 
 countered in my little period of three-and-thirty years ! 
 
 The contrast to the pilot is found in Long Tom Coffin, the 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 73 
 
 only character in Cooper s work that can be ranked near 
 Leatherstocking or Harvey Birch. He is the creature of the 
 same aspects of Cooper s genius, showing the same qualities 
 of truthfulness, picturesqueness and self-reliance. The spy s 
 pack and the hunter s rifle, the labels of their individuality, 
 are matched by Long Tom s harpoon and his cannon, and he 
 is localized to the imagination in the Ariel, as the other heroes 
 are fixed in the landscape. For all that, Long Tom differs 
 from both Harvey Birch and Leatherstocking. He repre 
 sents no tragic sacrifice, like the first, nor any of the pathos 
 of advancing civilization, like the second. Strongly individu 
 alized, he yet suggests a class, as Birch and Leatherstocking 
 do not. He is proud of his Nantucket ancestry and of his 
 Nantucket comrades, and is careful himself to say that their 
 skill is greater than his. The mention of the old mother for 
 whom he provides a comfortable home, gives him a place at 
 once in normal society. Cooper represents in him the highly 
 developed resourcefulness and the equally marked idiosyn- 
 cracy to be found in a crude society, and, for the same rea 
 sons, in the American navy during the Revolution. It is evi 
 dent, however, that Long Tom would be out of place on the 
 frigate; he belongs with the little schooner, on which disci 
 pline is apparently superseded by the efficiency of individuals, 
 and his death in the wreck is most fitting. He is no wizard 
 of the sea, like the mysterious pilot; his force is from his char 
 acter, his simplicity and his loyalty. By these two qualities 
 he is ennobled to a poetic degree, chivalrous in his rough way 
 to womanhood, and terrible to his foes. He alone in the story 
 belongs entirely to the sea. He therefore satisfies the imagina 
 tion more than Paul Jones and is more clearly remembered ; 
 he is the true hero of the book. 
 
 The nautical realism of The Pilot has been practically un 
 questioned. Cooper tried some of the early pages, the de 
 scription of the frigate in the gale, on a professional sailor, 
 
74 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 who visualized the episode so sincerely that he said the jib 
 would not stand so long in such a wind. Cooper took the ad 
 vice and blew the sail out of the bolt-rope. But the story has 
 great realistic force in directions that the untechnical lands 
 man can appreciate. A genuine atmosphere of physical dan 
 ger is sustained at a higher pitch, with fewer moments of 
 relief, than elsewhere in Cooper, who is the master of such 
 effect. Yet the climaxes of terror are both adequate and in 
 good taste. The abject cowardice of Dillon, and his death, 
 are matched as mental pictures by the physical horror of the 
 English captain s fate, harpooned to the mast. The good 
 taste which restrains these portrayals, by a master-touch of 
 art left Long Tom s last moments entirely to the imagination. 
 Cooper wrote other sea tales, some of them admirable, but 
 the only one that at all approaches The Pilot in merit or fame 
 is The Red Rover, published in 1828. Its plot is laid entirely 
 at sea, the land serving only as a place to start from and end 
 on. The immediate result is the necessary elimination of all 
 land manceuvers and of those coast dangers that stiffened the 
 plot of The Pilot. Since the story is not historical, the theme 
 of patriotism is almost debarred, though Cooper by a loyal 
 effort inserts a flavor of it. The interest is in pure adventure. 
 The Red Rover, a Byronic corsair of superhuman adroitness, 
 inexplicable moods, and detached virtues, is strangely drawn 
 to a young American, a disguised officer of the British navy, 
 who is at the moment plotting to deliver the pirate to justice. 
 The unsuspecting Red Rover takes the officer into his con 
 fidence, and to further his piratical purposes, puts him in 
 charge of a merchant vessel just leaving port. On this vessel 
 there are two ladies, with the younger of whom the officer is 
 in love. The conflict of so many demands upon his honor 
 bids fair to make this lover, rather than the pirate, the hero 
 of the book, but a balance is struck by the Red Rover s skill 
 in capturing his prey and defeating an English man-of-war, 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 75 
 
 and by his magnanimous treatment of the prisoners. His 
 surprising forbearance is due to a wholesale " disco very" of 
 relationships between himself and the ladies and the young 
 officer, such as quite equals the most optimistic " recogni 
 tions" of the old drama. His career is saved to patriotism by 
 the statement that it was the scorn heaped on him in the 
 British navy for his American birth that made him a pirate. 
 As a proof of his personal lovableness he is attended by a 
 Byronic mistress, disguised as a boy. 
 
 Cooper tells his story with so much singleness of impres 
 sion that The Red Rover, as a whole, has been ranked higher 
 than The Pilot, though the excellence of that story in its sepa 
 rate scenes is undisputed. It is only by esoteric standards, 
 however, that The Red Rover can be considered by the side of 
 the masterpiece. The number of available incidents in a 
 deep-sea story is so few limited practically to storms, mu 
 tinies, fire and battle that Cooper actually repeats one de 
 vice, the carrying away of the masts, to account for the cap 
 ture of both ships, though a single experience would have 
 taught the American officer caution. The device at the be 
 ginning of the story, by which the officer is put in charge of 
 the merchant vessel five minutes before she sails, is too im 
 possible even for a pirate story, and the Rover s skill and in 
 fluence border on or overlap the miraculous; the reader sees 
 none of the steps by which the evolutions of the pirate ship are 
 accomplished, nor is any convincing cause assigned for the 
 Rover s hold on his men. Yet the plot favored Cooper s 
 genius in the opportunity for long pursuits and for storms, 
 and here the interest rises to a high pitch. The Red Rover s 
 vessel is a second version of the Ariel, miraculously speedy 
 and graceful. Cooper s keen love of sea things makes the 
 boat attractive, though independently of the story; no human 
 interest adds to her charm, as Long Tom s presence enriched 
 the A riel. 
 
76 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 IV 
 
 It was Cooper s intention to write a cycle of romances deal 
 ing with the colonies in the Revolutionary War. The first 
 and last of these Legends of the Thirteen Republics was Lionel 
 Lincoln, or the Leaguer of Boston, published in 1825. The 
 careful preparation of this novel has been contrasted with the 
 desultory composition of The Spy. Although the same ardor 
 of patriotism inspired Cooper in this new historical novel, 
 the consciousness of faults and of the lack of sound history 
 in his first success persuaded him to more accurate researches 
 for the background of Lionel Lincoln. But the result was 
 most unfortunate. That the book was not an entire failure 
 was due to his general popularity at the moment. The dis 
 appointment must have been great to the author, who had 
 done what care could to insure its worth. The historical 
 scenes the fights at Concord and Lexington and Bunker 
 Hill have received the praise of qualified critics, and still are 
 interesting. The main plot, however, an extremely compli 
 cated domestic intrigue, not only is ineffective in itself, but it 
 has no necessary connection with the history. The average 
 reader would find little in the book to suggest Cooper s fa 
 miliar qualities; it is the more unfortunate, since the histori 
 cal background is elaborated with such unusual truth and 
 effect. 
 
 Cooper s next story, The Last of the Mohicans, 1826, came 
 into a fame so immediate and permanent that the failure of 
 Lionel Lincoln and that novel itself were speedily forgotten. 
 In 1824, while on a visit to Glens Falls, he had his attention 
 called to the caverns in the river as a suitable location for a 
 romance. From this hint grew the famous episode of the 
 fight on the island, and the rest of the exciting story. If The 
 Pioneers gave Cooper a footing in his peculiar realm, The 
 Last oj the Mohicans established his sovereignty for all time. 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 77 
 
 Here Leatherstocking, or Hawkeye, appears in his prime, 
 with his distinct traits well developed ; and the Indians rill the 
 story with that fascination, which, according to some critics, 
 is more of romance than of reality. 
 
 Of all the Leatherstocking Tales, this, the second in the 
 final series, can most easily stand by itself; yet something 
 must have been gained for its initial success by the public s 
 acquaintance with the hunter and his Indian comrade in The 
 Pioneers. Like Cooper s other masterpieces, The Last oj the 
 Mohicans has serious faults, or rather improbabilities, of con 
 struction;^! has been easy to point out the folly of summoning . 
 the heroines to a fort about to be captured, and no good rea 
 son is given for sending them by an unknown and dangerous 
 route, when they could have had the escort of the regiments. 1 
 The woodcraft of this story has been an amusing target for 
 Mark Twain s criticism. But none of these questions touch 
 the book s real power, which lies in its wealth of adventure. 
 The rapidity of the incidents has been justly called breathless. 
 And the adventure takes place in an atmosphere of true 
 poetry, an unsuspected source of delight to many an uncriti 
 cal reader. 
 
 The plot divides into two sections. The first gives the ad 
 ventures of Heyward, the sisters, and their guides on the peril 
 ous journey to Fort William Henry. The second deals with 
 the pursuit of Le Renard Subtil and his captives after the 
 massacre. With the exception, therefore, of the brief pause 
 in the doomed fort, the novel tells of a race or pursuit that 
 type of adventure Cooper excelled in ; and along the chase the 
 interest is furnished by the woodcraft of Hawkeye and the 
 Indians. This latter element gives the tale its attraction to 
 boy readers, as the character of Leatherstocking is its charm 
 for older people; there are so many other veins of interest, 
 however, in the story of Cora and her Indian admirers, in 
 the portrait of Montcalm and the historical element generally, 
 
78 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 and in the unusual description of landscape, that the novel 
 is fairly sure of its readers among all types of mind. 
 
 The Last oj the Mohicans is the only one of the Leather- 
 stocking Tales devoted especially to the Indians. Though 
 Hawkeye dominates the story by the more general interest 
 of his character, it was evidently Cooper s chief intention to 
 
 picture the Indian and his customs, his peculiar strategy, his 
 faults and his code of honor. Chingachgook and his son Un- 
 cas are idealized within the limits permissible to any heroes 
 of romance, yet the portrait concedes so much to actual In 
 dian character that Parkman s well-known objection to their 
 unnatural virtues has been almost entirely discarded by later 
 critical judgment. All that Cooper can fairly attribute to 
 Indian nature he bestows upon the chieftain and his son; they, 
 rather than Hawkeye, know th,e woods, and the hunter de- 
 
 . fers to their superior skill on all occasions. Their ideals of 
 courtesy, which more than anything else, perhaps, make in 
 credible the chivalry of the Mohicans, are probably not over 
 drawn, if we are to believe modern champions of the red man. 
 And it should be said for the credit of Cooper s subtlety, a 
 quality rarely attributed to him, that he has here treated the 
 -ominous theme of race-conflict with more absolute fineness 
 than any other American writer. Hawkeye draws a careful 
 line between the Indian s "gifts" and the white man s; from 
 his philosophical standpoint the murder of the French sen- 
 
 tinel is inevitable, since the Mohican is what he is, yet he 
 does not approve the treachery, nor does the reader- At no 
 time in the story does Cooper allow the reader s sympathy to 
 go out unreservedly to any Indian, even to Uncas. The red 
 man, whether Mohican or Huron, is represented as of a race 
 that cannot share the white man s ideals, and is therefore 
 doomed. It has been pointed out that Le Renard Subtil and 
 Uncas fall in love with Cora because she has negro blood; 
 that significant touch marks the barrier between Uncas and 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 79 
 
 all his civilized admirers. Had he declared his passion, Cora 
 would probably have rejected him with pity, but with little 
 less horror than she felt for Le Renard Subtil. Cooper does 
 the Indians justice; a little reflection shows that he has not 
 neglected their savage traits, even in Uncas, who he confesses 
 frankly is a romantic ideal. 
 
 Hawkeye is here a much nobler figure than the old hunter 
 of the settlement. He exhibits at its best that philosophy, 
 mingled fatalism and optimism, which is inseparable now 
 from his memory. He shows no surliness nor discontent, as 
 in The Pioneers. In fact, the only important trait common 
 to both books is his miraculous skill with the rifle. But what 
 raises him to heroic proportions in this story is his love for 
 Uncas, a master passion that quite exceeds his faithful friend-" 
 ship with Chingachgook. With Uncas dies the hope of the 
 Indian race, and the cause of his death is his hopeless worship 
 of the white girl. With him dies also the only social tie that 
 could have bound Hawkeye to any society; for Uncas, as he 
 so often says, is almost his own son. As Uncas is enlisted in 
 Cora s service by his love for her, so the scout follows, more 
 for the youth s sake than for any other reason, and few pas 
 sages in romance record more perfect chivalry than Hawk- 
 eye s return to the Huron camp to die with Uncas, or his 
 offer to give his life to Le Renard in exchange for Cora an 
 offer that had in mind the happiness of Uncas as well as of the 
 girl. 
 
 The pedant that Cooper likes to introduce into these stories 
 is in this case a strangely effective figure. In David Gamut, 
 the singing teacher, Cooper produces a travesty on the New 
 England character that in certain picturesque details of phy 
 sique and horsemanship recalls Ichabod Crane. Neither of 
 the two great New York writers had much insight into the 
 Yankee nature; perhaps it is natural that they should treat it 
 with most tenderness in their most exaggerated burlesques of 
 
8o LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 it; it is natural to make amends with a little sympathy, in 
 the midst of so much ridicule. David Gamut is an admi 
 rable foil for Hawkeye, whose contempt for the pitch-pipe, 
 "that useless we pon," at first blinds him to the singer s few 
 and simple virtues. But in scenes of danger a constantly 
 strengthened impulse to take up real arms and fight, at last 
 wins the scout s respect. Gamut also brings out in both the 
 Mohicans and the Hurons the Indian reverence for the men 
 tally infirm, and Hawkeye himself is not unawed by the 
 singer s phraseology and his rhapsodies. A large share of the 
 romance of the story settles about this uncouth figure as he 
 stands in the massacre at Fort William Henry, actually pro 
 tecting Cora and Alice by his song. 
 
 " If the Jewish boy might tame the evil spirit of Saul by 
 the sound of his harp, and the words of sacred song, it may 
 not be amiss, he said, to try the potency of music here. 
 
 "Then raising his voice to its highest tones, he poured out 
 a strain so powerful as to be heard even amid the din of that 
 bloody field. More than one savage rushed towards them, 
 thinking to rifle the unprotected sisters of their attire and bear 
 away their scalps; but when they found this strange and un 
 moved figure riveted to his post, they paused to listen. As 
 tonishment soon changed to admiration, and they passed on 
 to other and less courageous victims, openly expressing their 
 satisfaction at the firmness with which the white warrior sang 
 his death song." 
 
 It would have been hard to improve on the portraits of 
 Munro, the English commander, and Montcalm. The first 
 is largely a fictitious person, elaborated according to the 
 needs of the plot and Cooper s idea of the British soldier of 
 the period. The conflict in his heart between his duties as 
 commander and his love for his daughter gives him a place 
 of dignity in the romance, which otherwise, in view of his de 
 feat and his helplessness, he could hardly hold. As a soldier 
 he is of course brave, but not astute; Cooper lets him stand 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 81 
 
 for the usual British incapacity to cope with the Indians, 
 which Braddock so fatally illustrated. Only such a man 
 would have summoned his daughters to the besieged fort, 
 or would have neglected to insist on Montcalm s promised 
 escort. In sharp contrast is the portrait of the Frenchman, 
 a beautiful conception of old-world grace and courtliness, 
 which Cooper must have drawn with affection. Yet with all 
 Montcalm s adroitness, his management of the Indians and 
 his tact in treating with a conquered foe, the reader is made 
 to feel the moral slipperiness which the hearty Englishman 
 resents with a national distrust of French traditional perfidy. 
 The trait is not too strong, however, for the charm of the 
 character, and Cooper, with the reserve of a good historian as 
 well as artist, pronounces no final judgment on Montcalm s 
 conduct. 
 
 The massacre, the historical point about which the romance 
 revolves, has natural opportunities for picturesqueness, al 
 most for pageantry in Scott s vein. But the bent of Cooper s 
 genius for actual rather than for imagined scenes is illustrated 
 by the superiority of such pictures as he could remember 
 from his visits to Lake Champlain, over even the description 
 of the massacre. The ruins of the fort, revisited by the scout 
 and his party, are truer to the mind than Hey ward s first 
 glimpse of the stronghold. So also the adventure in the old 
 burying-ground and the encounter with the unfortunate 
 French sentinel by the bloody pond, such pictures as the 
 imagination would build upon actual sight of those places, 
 belong not to history at all, but to poetry and romance. In 
 these two latter scenes, as in most of the night descriptions, 
 the landscape becomes an element of great power, almost an 
 actor in the story. Cooper is nearer here than anywhere else 
 to the classical awe of nature, or the Wordsworthian sense of 
 its personality. At such moments he is most the poet; he 
 makes the dim moonlit forest seem to close in upon the hu- 
 
82 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 man adventure and supplant it; had his temperament been 
 less sane, so much susceptibility would have endowed the 
 northern pinewoods with sylvan deities out of hand. 
 
 In 1822 Cooper had left Scarsdale and taken up his resi 
 dence in New York, that he might be near the literary world. 
 The first years of his success had brought many changes in his 
 family and his affairs. His mother was dead, and his older 
 son, Fenimore, had died in 1823. The next year his second 
 son, Paul, the last of his children, was born. There were also 
 four daughters living, and one had died in infancy. His 
 father s estate, through various causes, had depreciated until 
 its value was too little to provide comfortably for the novelist. 
 The returns from the stories, however, had placed Cooper in 
 a secure financial position. Just what his profits were is not 
 known, but with such popularity as he enjoyed, they must 
 have been great. Had he been able to control by copyright 
 the sales in foreign countries, his income would have been 
 enormous; for as fast as they were written the novels were 
 published in thirty-four different places in Europe, and were 
 on sale in every European bookshop. It is not known, how 
 ever, what arrangements Cooper made even with his Ameri 
 can publishers; he resembled Scott in the ability to keep his 
 secrets. He brought out The Spy at his own expense, since 
 no one else would run the risk, and his share in the returns of 
 that book at least must have been large. 
 
 It was natural for a person of his mental energy to turn his 
 thoughts to travel on the first opportunity. His naval ex 
 perience had afforded him little knowledge of England and 
 less of the Continent, and his devotion to his family, a dis 
 tinguishing trait, for some time prevented him from going 
 abroad alone. On June i, 1826, he sailed for Europe with 
 g his household, family and servants, intending to remain away 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 83 
 
 for five years; he did not return, however, till November, 1833. 
 These years of travel were of the deepest influence upon his 
 later career, providing him with material for those criticisms 
 of the old world and the new, which he made with so much 
 more vigor than tact, and which accordingly brought him 
 into general dislike. Even before he sailed he had laid a few 
 lasting foundations for unpopularity. His sudden rise ex 
 cited the envy of the small fry of letters, and his peculiar sen 
 sitiveness to adverse criticism served to encourage rather than 
 suppress attacks upon him. The original preface to The 
 Pioneers had referred to the race of critics in a passage which 
 illustrates his strange facility in making enemies: "I should 
 think criticism to be the perfection of human acquirements, 
 did there not exist this discrepancy in taste. Just as I have 
 made up my mind to adopt the very sagacious hints of one 
 learned Reviewer, a pamphlet is put into my hands contain 
 ing the remarks of another, who condemns all that his rival 
 praises, and praises all that his rival condemns. There I 
 am, left like an ass between two locks of hay; so that I have 
 determined to relinquish my animate nature, and remain 
 stationary, like a lock of hay between two asses." For the 
 time, however, this sharp challenge produced no uncomfort 
 able effect for Cooper; his greatness as an author was a matter 
 of pride to his countrymen, and before he sailed for Europe a 
 literary club founded by himself gave him a dinner in New 
 York, at which Chancellor Kent, DeWitt Clinton and other 
 notable guests bore testimony to the esteem in which he was 
 held. That occasion practically ended the purely literary 
 part of his career, the happiest part. 
 
 His time abroad was passed in France, Italy, Switzerland 
 and Germany, but chiefly in France. The generous admira 
 tion of his genius which the French showed from the first, of 
 itself would have made his stay among them pleasant, but he 
 was still more attracted by the courtesy and grace of their 
 
84 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 national character, and especially by the polished life of 
 Paris. If the French admired him as a sort of romantic ex 
 pert in savagery, he found in their capital the aristocratic ex- 
 quisiteness of breeding that had always been his social ideal, 
 though his own manners may not have realized it. For the 
 two years following 1826 he was consul at Lyons, but the post 
 added little to his knowledge of the French, or to his literary 
 equipment. Though he made his longest stay in France, 
 Cooper, like all American men of letters since, lost his heart 
 completely to Italy. It is perhaps proof of the poet in him, 
 that his devotion was so entire to a country that then had so 
 few of the institutions which appeal to an ardent democrat. 
 
 Cooper s stay in England was very short, but unfortunately 
 it was long enough to make him unduly sensitive to insular 
 ignorance and prejudice, and to start him on the campaign of 
 controversy which was the curse of his later life. Among the 
 most cultured Englishmen he found a cordial reception, or at 
 least a sincere intention of it; but the English attitude at that 
 moment toward America and Americans was so condescend 
 ing, as Cooper knew in advance, that it would have required 
 more than British tact to keep his temper unruffled. He came 
 to England on his travels with a love of his own country and a 
 resentment of English injustice that must have been quite 
 unparalleled, even in years of angry feeling. On his first voy 
 age, in 1806, two American-born comrades had been seized 
 and pressed into the British service, and one such act of 
 tyranny was enough to inflame Cooper for the rest of his life. 
 Even the praise his own work received from the English was 
 usually couched in terms to annoy rather than please him; 
 knowing the individuality of his own genius, he naturally did 
 not like to be called the "American Scott." And at times 
 English criticism of him, and treatment of him too, passed 
 quite into the manner of insult. 
 
 That his unpleasant experience was in part at least his own 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 85 
 
 fault would be proved beyond question, even if we had no 
 other evidence, by Washington living s far more delightful 
 relations with the English. Nathaniel P. Willis also, though 
 he made himself less lovable than Irving, was equally happy 
 in England. Cooper was undoubtedly looking for quarrels, 
 and he had a strange gift for finding them. His habitual 
 championing of his country, not always perhaps in the best 
 taste, gave him the reputation of being prouder of American 
 citizenship than of the authorship of his novels. It became 
 somewhat dangerous in his presence, as later in Lowell s, to 
 introduce the United States as a subject in any degree for 
 controversy, but he had not Lowell s wit nor his grace to keep 
 the argument from bitterness. In 1828 he published his No 
 tions of the Americans, Picked up by a Traveling Bachelor , a 
 work intended to set Europeans right in their judgments of 
 the republic. It has been well pointed out that no American 
 would learn anything new from this treatise, nor would the 
 prejudiced foreigner be convinced of his ignorance by the ex 
 treme praise of the author s country. Cooper s statements, as 
 far as they go, show an unusual knowledge of America, and 
 unusual wisdom in the predictions of her future, but the whole 
 work defeated its purpose by its partisanship. And some in 
 cidental disparagement of English society was the probable 
 cause of the ill-feeling shown towards him later by the Eng 
 lish press. In all the novels he wrote at this period he very 
 unnecessarily went out of his way to defend America or to 
 attack its critics. This practice became for a while so un 
 pleasantly common with him, that an illustration of it from 
 The Heidenmauer will not be without value. The passage 
 is one of the least offensive of its kind, though Cooper s satire 
 is never subtle or delicate : 
 
 "Should we unheedingly betray the foible of national 
 vanity that foul and peculiar blot of American character! 
 we solicit forgiveness; urging, hi our own justification, the 
 
86 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 aptitude of a young country for falling insensibly into the vein 
 of imitation, and praying the critical observer to overlook any 
 blunders in this way, if perchance we should not manifest 
 that felicity of execution which is the fruit only of great prac 
 tice. Hitherto we believe that our modesty cannot justly be 
 impeached. As yet we have left the cardinal virtues to man 
 kind in the gross, never, to our knowledge, having written of 
 American courage, or American honesty, nor yet of Amer 
 ican beauty, nor haply of American manliness, nor even of 
 American strength of arm, as qualities abstracted and not 
 common to our fellow-creatures; but have been content, in 
 the unsophisticated language of this western clime, to call 
 virtue, virtue and vice, vice. In this we well know how 
 much we have fallen short of numberless but nameless clas 
 sical writers of our time, though we do not think we are greatly 
 losers by the forbearance, because we have sufficient proof 
 that when we wish to make our pages unpleasant to the for 
 eigner, we can effect that object by much less imposing allu 
 sions to national merits; since we have good reason to believe, 
 there exists a certain querulous class of readers who consider 
 even the most delicate and reserved commendations of this 
 western world as so much praise unreasonably and dishonestly 
 abstracted from themselves." 
 
 From this habitual defending of his country against British 
 criticism Cooper s evil fate brought him to defending him 
 self against his own countrymen. There were many Ameri 
 cans then as now, who for various reasons were not so sure as 
 he of republican superiority over older forms of government. 
 And in 1831, when Cooper took part in a public discussion of 
 the relative burden of taxation in France and America, these 
 critics made their opinion of him fairly plain. Lafayette, 
 whom Cooper honored out of patriotic gratitude as well as 
 friendship, had referred to the United States as a model of 
 inexpensive government. His opponents in French politics 
 claimed that the average Frenchman was taxed less than the 
 average American. Cooper felt obliged to support his friend 
 in the Letter to General Lajayette, a pamphlet which stated in 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 87 
 
 detail the low cost of the American government. Some polite 
 interchange of argument followed, but the interest was sud 
 denly shifted for Cooper by the interference of a Mr. Leavitt 
 Harris, an American long resident in Russia, who for some 
 unexplained reason felt impelled to rebuke Cooper by denying 
 the accuracy of both his premises and his deductions. The 
 American government, interested in the discussion, began 
 collecting information from the different parts of the Union, 
 without distinction between Federal and local taxes. Against 
 this method of investigating the subject Cooper protested 
 effectively, on the ground that the taxes compared in the two 
 countries should logically be the same. This protest took 
 the form of an open letter, printed in a Philadelphia paper in 
 December, 1832. It ended the controversy as far as Cooper 
 was concerned, but it furnished occasion for his American 
 critics to complain that his patriotism was too strenuous and 
 his self-appointed guardianship of the United States egotisti 
 cal. He could well feel that his countrymen had failed to 
 appreciate his devotion. The years abroad had been passed 
 in a kind of unofficial service of democracy, service rich in 
 zeal, if not in tact; the end of his travels brought him home 
 cruelly wounded by what he considered democracy s rejec 
 tion of hun. 
 
 VI 
 
 During his residence abroad Cooper wrote two groups of 
 stories, one dealing with American themes, the other devoted 
 to an attack on monarchical institutions. In both groups the 
 grade of excellence varies greatly. By far the most famous 
 novel is the first of the American group, The Prairie, pub 
 lished in May, 1827. This is the conclusion of the Leather- 
 stocking Tales, describing the last days of the hunter, as The 
 Pioneers described the last days of his comrade Chingach- 
 gook. In artistic value, however, there is no comparison be- 
 
88 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 tween the two books; The Prairie is a masterpiece, though the 
 solidity of its qualities prevents it from becoming as popular, 
 perhaps, as the more brilliant stories. Cooper s happy skill 
 in tracing a character into old age, for which only Thackeray 
 in one instance, Beatrix Esmond, gives a parallel, is exhibited 
 here in the portrait of Hawkeye, now a venerable trapper, 
 but undeniably the same person who years before had pro 
 tected Heyward and the Munro sisters. This character alone 
 sustains the popular interest in the story. But an imagina 
 tive reader finds also a poetical rendering of the prairie land 
 scape, a kind of group-picture of elemental man with nature 
 for a background, that has hardly been excelled in American 
 literature. 
 
 The plot is of the simplest. Ishmael Bush, the squatter, 
 is moving across the plains to find a home suited to his law 
 less nature; like Hawkeye, though for a different reason, he is 
 crowded westward by civilization. Abiram White, his villain 
 ous brother-in-law, has persuaded him to kidnap Inez, whom 
 Middleton, her lover, pursues; and the bee-hunter follows 
 for love of Ellen, who lives with Bush s family against her 
 will. This simple story is complicated to a slight degree by 
 the murder of Asa Bush and the temporary suspicion under 
 which the trapper falls, by the hostile Indians, and by the 
 prairie fire. As usual in the Leatherstocking Tales, Leather- 
 stocking himself stands outside the action, lending his aid 
 only as occasion demands. 
 
 Ishmael Bush s journey gives the plot the ground plan of a 
 pursuit and rescue, already familiar in Cooper s method. But 
 in this story there is a central theme of rest instead of motion. 
 The main plot is framed in, -so to speak, between the vast 
 stillness of the deserted prairie, and the no less heroic calm 
 of the trapper s age. Bush has almost reached the end of his 
 pilgrimage when the story begins; at its close he is retracing 
 his steps to the east. The solidity of nature, massive rocks 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 89 
 
 and wide reaches, an effective if not accurate idea of the 
 prairie, take the place of the stirring witchery of the forest, 
 as Bush and his stalwart sons supplant the lithe frontiersman 
 of the earlier stories. The movement necessary in the pic 
 ture for the sake of contrast is furnished by the Sioux and 
 Pawnee bands on their horses, and by the fire; but in both 
 cases the effect is a pictorial illusion of motion, the somber 
 plot unfolds in practically one place, without haste and with 
 out change. 
 
 The squatter and his family are perhaps the most Titantic 
 figures in Cooper at least on the physical side; they seem to 
 be magnified in the enchanted prairie light, like rude gods of 
 the early world, dim-souled, misty and vast. Had they rep 
 resented anything in the story commensurate with their im 
 posing stature, they might have taken their place with the un 
 forgettable peasant-figures of French painting. As it is, their 
 huge clay is informed with dignity only when they are roused 
 by their brother s murder; until that time they are open to a 
 suspicion of meanness, even viciousness. Cooper redeems 
 the whole family by Ishmael s belated sense of justice to the 
 girls, no less than by the elemental force of the execution 
 scene. 
 
 Aside from the novelty of putting them on horseback, 
 Cooper says nothing new of his Indians; Sioux and Pawnee, 
 they are the familiar Iroquois and Mohican, Le Renard Sub 
 til and Le Gros Serpent, come to life again. Hard Heart is 
 clearly an idealized savage, no more typical than Chingach- 
 gook or Uncas, but equally legitimate in a romance as Wash 
 ington or Paul Jones is a legitimate character, but not aver 
 age, of their race. The Pawnee chief gains this much over 
 Chingachgook, that he enters the story unannounced, and 
 unprotected by the good name of Hawkeye; like the Mohi 
 can, he serves as the measure of Hawkeye s character, giving 
 a savage s testimony to absolute honesty and wisdom; and he 
 
go LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 is necessary in the plot to show how much more at home the 
 old hunter is with red men than with white. Leatherstock- 
 ing would like to be passive in any struggle between Bush and 
 the Sioux, little as he likes the latter, because to his high sense 
 of justice the Indian owns the land ; and much more does his 
 heart go to the young Pawnee, whose principles are as just as 
 his own, and who reverences his age. 
 
 In the Doctor, Owen Bat, Cooper gives us another of his 
 pedants perhaps his most tiresome one. He and Middleton 
 and the bee-hunter, and Ellen and Inez, are involuntarily neg 
 lected in a final mental summary of the story. The mind 
 holds simply to the picture of the prairie, with the group of 
 Bush s caravan, and the two bands of Indians, and in the 
 center of the picture the aged Leatherstocking. It is a pic 
 ture of elemental man, the white man seeking breathing- 
 room in the wildness, and the Indian warring in his native 
 savagery, and the best of the elemental of both races united 
 in Leatherstocking. It is also a picture of age; the squatter 
 has been driven to the wall by progress, and he sees the end 
 of his kind in the death of his favorite son; the Indians, 
 though mounted on the wild horses of the plains, are already 
 overtaken, as Leatherstocking sees, by the landhunter; and 
 Leatherstocking himself dies beaten in his long flight from 
 the influence of the "settlements." The future is with the 
 less significant characters the pedantic scientist, the bee- 
 hunter, and the young army officer. 
 
 Age makes Leatherstocking more effective in some of his 
 traits, thought it takes from him his skill and his physical 
 prowess. The tendency to sermonize on all occasions seems 
 natural in so old a man, and the slight self-conceit of his 
 youth and prime are buried beneath a touching humility, that 
 confesses age and infirmity with shame. With the instinct of 
 genius Cooper has stripped from his hero s character all but 
 the rooted fibers that time could not touch; he is brave, simple 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 91 
 
 and honest, and nothing more. And his dying answer to the 
 imagined roll-call is a master-stroke that Thackeray imitated, 
 but did not equal, in Colonel Newcome s " Adsum!" 
 
 Cooper s instinct for plot seems to desert him more or less 
 when he chooses subjects apart from the Leatherstocking 
 frontier or the sea. In the novels dealing with those themes 
 and in The Spy, though his constructive art is open to much 
 criticism, he usually avails himself of all the possibilities of the 
 story; there may be insufficient motive or explanation of the 
 incidents, but little could be added to the incidents them 
 selves. In other novels, however, and in his later work gen 
 erally, there is often a rich suggestion in plot or character that 
 goes undeveloped or is allowed to die by the way, as though 
 the author were not aware of its significance. The Wept o) 
 Wish-ton-Wish, published in November, 1829, a year after 
 The Red Rover, illustrates such a failure to make the most of 
 a story. The plot is laid in New England, in King Philip s 
 war, and its simple elements might have given Cooper the 
 material for a very striking romance. In an attack upon a 
 Puritan household the Indians carry off a little girl. An In 
 dian boy, who has been kindly treated by the child s father, 
 falls in love with her, and when they both grow up, marries 
 her. He becomes a powerful chief, in league with King 
 Philip, and in the war happens to attack the long-forgotten 
 parents of his white bride. In gratitude he protects them and 
 offers to restore their daughter, but she has become an Indian 
 at heart, and prefers her husband s life. This is the intended 
 theme of the story, and the title refers to the heroine, the child 
 whose loss was bemoaned in the valley of Wish-ton-Wish. 
 Many white children were captured by the Indians and 
 adopted into their tribes; had Cooper elaborated his story 
 with this theme in mind, he would have portrayed a phase 
 of the early Indian warfare which has not yet been used with 
 effect in romance. But from the capture of the little girl, in 
 
92 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the beginning of the book, to her reappearance at the end, 
 nothing is said of her; the story occupies itself with a picture 
 of Puritan life in the New England frontier a subject Cooper 
 was eminently unfitted to deal with. Even if he had been 
 fitted, however, the result would have been the same; it is 
 difficult to find any direction in the movement of the plot, and 
 the story has apparently neither hero nor heroine. This un 
 certainty of interest is reflected in the various titles of the 
 novel, in England, The Borderers, and in France, The Puri 
 tans o) America, or the Valley of Wish-ton-Wish. 
 
 Something has been said already of Cooper s deficient 
 sympathy with the Puritan character. His biographer has 
 explained this by the paradox that he was himself too like the 
 Puritans to do them justice. The explanation is not com 
 pletely satisfactory, for in an essential quality of Puritanism 
 Cooper was as completely lacking as Irving; he was in no re 
 spect a visionary nor a dreamer. In so far as Puritanism co 
 incided with his nature, he portrayed it admirably in this 
 novel; he lets the reader see the practical vigor, the exalted 
 piety, and the domestic affection of Mark Heathcote and his 
 comrades, for these virtues he can recognize, as he could rec 
 ognize the common piety and the common sense of The Pil 
 grim s Progress. But the mastering vision that burns like 
 flame in the Puritan temper, impelling it to strenuous action, 
 was entirely hidden from Cooper, if we can judge by his 
 writings. Mark Heathcote, living in the wilderness to enjoy 
 freedom in his beliefs, is presented as a fanatic, whose only 
 claim on our sympathies is his efficient soldier-quality when 
 there is fighting to do. So little did Cooper understand the 
 type, that he actually divorced warfare and religion in his 
 conception of the Puritan, as though Cromwell and his men 
 fought for earthly purposes, which they would try to regret 
 when they went to church. It is in this Quaker-like aspect 
 that Mark Heathcote is described: "Even the gentle and or- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 93 
 
 dinarily little observant Ruth might trace the kindling of the 
 eye, the knitting of the brow, and the flushing of his pale and 
 furrowed cheek, as the murderous conflicts of the civil wars 
 became the themes of the ancient soldier s discourse. There 
 were moments when religious submission, and we had almost 
 said religious precepts, were partially forgotten, as he ex 
 plained to his attentive son and listening grandchild, the na 
 ture of the onset, or the quality and dignity of the retreat. At 
 such times, his still nervous hand would even wield the blade, 
 in order to instruct the latter in its uses, and many a long win 
 ter evening was passed in thus indirectly teaching an art that 
 was so much at variance with the mandates of his Divine 
 Master." 
 
 Grave as is this misunderstanding of the Puritans, Cooper 
 does the type a more serious injustice in the virtual betrayal of 
 the Indian chief who had brought back his wife to her parents. 
 The hypocrisy of the white men, led by their pastor, the Rev 
 erend Meek Wolfe, inspires a horror that would have pre 
 vented the popularity of the story, even if it had been founded 
 in truth. The only portion of the novel that repays reading 
 now is the description of the attack on the blockhouse, and 
 the escape of the defenders by hiding in the well. 
 
 The last of the novels on American subjects written abroad, 
 was The Water Witch, published in December, 1830. It has 
 the merits of Cooper s other sea stories, to a moderate extent, 
 and in the destruction of the burning warship and the ad 
 ventures of the survivors on the raft, it has a moment of gran 
 deur, but neither its plot nor its characters are at all impor 
 tant. Evidently it is a tame replica of The Red Rover, with the 
 substitution of a smuggler, the Skinner of the Seas, for the 
 pirate. There is the same phenomenally fast and graceful 
 outlaw ship, the same magic in its handling, a secret relation 
 ship to be discovered in the final chapter, and a girl in love 
 with the outlaw, disguised in his ship as a youth. Since the 
 
94 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 hero is a smuggler, not a pirate, the story would be quite 
 bloodless if the patriotic element were not introduced, with 
 some effort, by arranging a fight between the British and 
 French cruisers. The main interest is in the smugglers skill 
 in eluding his pursuers, at sea and in the harbor waters of New 
 York; it might be added that this real interest is lessened by 
 the mummery which is meant to wrap the outlaw s ship in 
 mystery. 
 
 The second class of novels Cooper wrote in Europe includes 
 The Bravo, published in November, 1831, The Heidenmauer, 
 published in September 1832, and The Headsman, published 
 in October, 1833. These stories represent old world forms of 
 government or social conditions, in contrast with the repub 
 lican ideals of America. All three suffer from the purpose 
 that inspired them. Cooper could tell a story, apparently, 
 only when he gave himself up to it without reserve; to make it 
 serve a didactic purpose was for him to confuse and enfeeble 
 the plot. Further, he had chosen to write about times well 
 back in history, trusting to his reading and to his acquaint 
 ance with the scenes to make the stories faithful pictures of the 
 past. But he was by nature no scholar; he was neither widely 
 nor deeply read; and the Venice and Germany and Switzer 
 land of these three books are more convincing of his trust in 
 the democratic ideal than of his competence to judge old in 
 stitutions. Especially is this true in the second and third of 
 the series; in the first he could make so general a use of the 
 modern Venice as a stimulus to the imagination, that he seems 
 to speak with considerable authority of its medieval condition. 
 
 On other accounts also The Bravo is to be reckoned the best 
 of these novels. Its subject, the despotism of a city pretend 
 ing to freedom, could easily be embroidered with striking 
 scenes of palace, prison and lagoon, and the pictorial sense 
 in Cooper s genius was never appealed to in vain. As a pan 
 orama of Venetian life, then, the story has undoubted power, 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 95 
 
 though the portrait, as far as it includes human character, 
 may be quite incorrect. The social fabric of the city, under 
 mined in all directions by treachery and concealed distrust, 
 makes a consistent picture; its effect lies not only in the pub 
 licly recognized career of the assassin, in the dark figure of the 
 Bravo and the foul murder of the fisherman, Antonio, but 
 still more in the unstable household of Signer Gradenigo, who 
 sets spies on his own son, for good reasons, and is himself dis 
 covered in his designs on his ward. In the treatment of all 
 grades of society Cooper is here unusually successful; the 
 gondoliers, the shopkeepers and minor citizens, are realized 
 as faithfully as their lords, and the Doge and the Council of 
 Three are portrayed in their official state with a remarkable 
 effect of actuality, whatever they may owe to imagination. 
 But the chief power of the story is in the tragic plot. The in 
 evitable fate of the Bravo, used by all rivals to spy on each 
 other, and safe from them only by virtue of the secrets he 
 knows, becomes plain to the reader by a gradual enlighten 
 ment, so that the story gathers gloom as it proceeds; and the 
 realization that the course of life so surely fatal was never his 
 choice, but was the price, vainly paid, of his innocent father s 
 freedom, completes the indictment against a social system 
 that sacrificed him to its selfish fears. The Bravo, in his pa 
 tience and the injustice of his evil fame, is akin to Harvey 
 Birch; for patriotism is substituted in his case hatred of his 
 city, a natural result that Cooper means to indicate as a very 
 real part of his tragic fate. Not to examine too closely a novel 
 which has no claim to be considered masterly, it is enough to 
 mention its chief fault for modern readers, the tedious extent 
 to which Cooper explains to his ignorant countrymen the 
 characteristics and customs of Venice. It seems improbable 
 that even in 1831 the average American reader needed to be 
 told that Venice is built practically in the water, with canals 
 for streets and gondolas for vehicles; nor did he probably need 
 
96 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 to be told how a gondola is propelled. It may be suspected 
 that those of Cooper s countrymen who did need his instruc 
 tion, never read his book. 
 
 The Heidenmauer is among its author s most complete 
 failures, though it is not the least readable of his books. It 
 deals with the monastic orders shortly after Luther s attacks, 
 when the church of Rome had still a strong though a failing 
 grasp on Germany. In plot the story is feeble, its only im 
 portant incident being the destruction of a monastery by a 
 heretic baron. One of the baron s followers, the hero, if the 
 story has any, is supposed to have perished in the burning 
 chapel, and the most moving scene in the book tells of his 
 stricken mother s vain pleadings with the church for prayers 
 for his soul. As he has not been killed at all, however, the 
 church s pride suffers an anticlimax. The only original char 
 acter is the hermit, who having committed sacrilege in a 
 youthful enthusiasm for Protestantism, is haunted by the 
 wrath of God, a lifelong prey to remorse. In so rambling and 
 ineffective a story it is hard to see the author s intention, but 
 the hermit brings into relief the failure of the religious order 
 about him, both by his superstition, and by its inability or 
 unwillingness to recover such a penitent to the sane uses of 
 life. 
 
 The Headsman is an excellent example of wasted oppor 
 tunity in plot. Intended to record the tyranny of local cus 
 toms in an undemocratic society, the story unfolds, after a 
 somewhat tiresome introduction, in strong outlines which ad 
 mirably develop its theme, and which promise to be as logi 
 cally relentless as a Greek tragedy. The canton in which the 
 plot is laid has a hereditary executioner. The office, once 
 considered an honor, has become an unspeakable disgrace, 
 and the unhappy heir to it in each generation would escape it 
 if it were not compulsory. In spite of his tediousness, Cooper 
 makes the horror of the headsman and his family entirely 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 97 
 
 convincing in the first chapters of the novel; from this point 
 the plot begins. A young soldier saves the life of a beautiful 
 girl and her father, winning the girl s love and the father s ap 
 proval. All three are present at a wedding which terminates 
 abruptly in the discovery that the bride is the headsman s 
 daughter. Unwilling to bear the public disgrace of union with 
 the family, the bridegroom jilts her at the altar. The young 
 soldier, strangely disturbed by the incident, tells his betrothed, 
 as a matter of honor, that she cannot marry him, for he is the 
 headsman s son, supposed dead, but really seeking to avoid 
 the dreadful inheritance. With this information, when the 
 unchivalrous bridegroom is found murdered, suspicion natu 
 rally falls on the young soldier. Had he been guilty of the 
 crime and been beheaded by his father, or had his father been 
 the murderer, for him to execute, the plot would have been 
 complete. But at this point Cooper seems to lose sight of his 
 original purpose. It turns out that none of the important 
 characters had anything to do with the murder, and the young 
 soldier is discovered to be, not the headsman s son, but the 
 heir of a noble family. The story is worth reading for the 
 excitement of this rapid descent in the last chapters. 
 
 VII 
 
 Cooper returned to America November 5, 1833, and took 
 up his residence again in New York. His unfortunate ex 
 periences with his countrymen while abroad made false im 
 pressions inevitable to his oversensitive disposition, and he 
 probably threw away the one chance he had to recover a 
 friendlier point of view. A public dinner was offered him, a 
 compliment similar to that he had received at his departure; 
 but prompt as the invitation was within two weeks of his 
 landing he had already fancied himself slighted or treated 
 with coldness by his old friends. Perhaps for this reason he 
 declined the honor now sincerely offered. It is hard to under- 
 
98 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 stand his state of mind. Apparently he had brooded upon 
 American criticisms of him until he could accept nothing but 
 aggressive warfare with his countrymen. He was so much a 
 political and social idealist that he mentally severed all con 
 nection between those fellow-countrymen whom he had come 
 almost to despise, and his country, which he worshiped. It 
 has been well said that the rapid changes in the United States 
 during his absence were of a nature to estrange him; on his 
 return he found great commercial activity, and very natu 
 rally, no proportionate advance in culture or art. But the 
 willingness he had shown in the preface to The Pioneers to 
 start controversy and to rouse permanent enemies, makes 
 other explanations unnecessary. The most ardent admirer 
 of Cooper must admit that even if he had not gone abroad, 
 and if the country had not changed, he would probably have 
 got himself into trouble. It is impossible to form an accurate 
 idea of his personality, so far as details of manner are con 
 cerned, for the most reliable of those who described him were 
 usually critics or admirers, and the accounts contradict one 
 another. Scott, whom he met in Paris, thought him rude, and 
 the English record in general follows Barry Cornwall s im 
 pression that he was boorish. Yet the reverse was said of 
 him by English acquaintances, and there were many friends 
 in America to bear witness to his warm heart and his generous 
 loyalty. It is fairly safe, however, to concede that he was un 
 pleasantly rough in manner when he returned to his country, 
 and few men, if any, were attracted to him through a personal 
 encounter. And in his polemical writings he had a mania for 
 expressing disagreeable truths; that they were truths, cannot 
 be denied, for his sense of justice was admirable. Indeed, he 
 distributed his energies equally among all nations and parties 
 which he was in position to know a kind of muck-raker at 
 large. If in his later years he becomes an unpleasant figure, 
 to which national pride would prefer not to point, it is well to 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 99 
 
 keep in mind, as compensating virtues, his real love of justice 
 and his high ideals for his country. 
 
 Most of the physical descriptions of him date from about 
 this time, when he was abroad or soon after his return. He 
 was tall and stalwart, the most athletic of American authors. 
 In the foreign accounts of him some allowance must be made 
 for the disposition to find the frontiersman in every American, 
 but even with that allowance we can well believe that he did 
 appear somewhat out of place in continental drawing-rooms. 
 The impression which he gave of great strength and energy 
 made him seem as restless as a wild animal yearning for out 
 door freedom. The familiar portrait of him is in accord with 
 the written description ; his eye was deep, slow moving and not 
 very bright, and his heavy features, in repose almost stolid, 
 suggested a peasant ancestry. 
 
 His actual warfare with the American public began in his 
 Letter to His Countrymen, which appeared in June, 1834. 
 This pamphlet was a reply to adverse criticisms in several 
 New York papers, of The Bravo and others of his books. In 
 addition to the uselessness of such a reply under any circum 
 stances, it was not at all clear that Cooper had a good case. 
 But his evil star led him by a surprisingly roundabout course 
 to include a discussion of the quarrel then in progress between 
 President Jackson and the Senate, and he managed by an 
 adroit exhibition of his impartiality to wound the feelings of 
 both legislature and executive. This letter made the author 
 a subject of national debate. The press turned on him the 
 disgraceful vigor of its denunciations, at once squaring all old 
 scores, and his onslaught upon the politicians made for him a 
 generous harvest of really powerful enemies. The sale of his 
 books is said to have fallen off, though even his bitterest op 
 ponents occasionally honored the genius apart from the man. 
 But whatever might be the personal loss, Cooper had now 
 committed himself single-handed to the unequal struggle, and 
 
loo LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 he opened a general attack on all enemies in The Manikins, 
 in July, 1835. 
 
 This satire, describing the visits of John Goldencalf and 
 his comrades to the countries of Leaphigh and Leaplow 
 England and America has been pronounced unreadable. 
 It is certainly tedious on the whole, and there is no reason why 
 it should be read to-day. It is surprising, however, that it was 
 not read when it appeared; the excitement of the moment 
 would naturally have caused Cooper s opponents to look into 
 it. The fact seems to be, however, that it was a flat failure. 
 Cooper had no gift for satire, and his conversation is inva 
 riably the weakest thing in his novels; as most of his satire is 
 conveyed through the discourse of Dr. Reasono and Noah 
 Poke and Goldencalf, and as much of their discussion has no 
 interest to-day, the book is generally dull. But when Cooper 
 drops the conversation and hits out in his Brobdingnagian 
 vein of satire, the result is often funny and makes excellent 
 reading. The introduction contains what ammunition was 
 left over from the volume, and its painstaking thoroughness 
 is delightful. 
 
 - Having passed from a serious difference of opinion with 
 some of his countrymen to a condition of conflict with all of 
 them, Cooper now had the misfortune to localize the conflict 
 in his native village. On his return from Europe he had spent 
 a few winters in New York, but during the summers he re 
 stored his father s house, which had fallen into ruin, and when 
 the repairs were completed he took up his residence at Coop- 
 erstown for the rest of his life. His father had owned a piece 
 of land called Three Mile Point, a convenient excursion place, 
 which with the permission of the estate had been used by 
 the public until they had forgotten it was private property. 
 Cooper, as executor of the estate, took occasion to remind his 
 townspeople of the true ownership of the Point, though he in 
 terfered in no way with their use of it. They paid no atten- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER lot 
 
 tion to him, and in 1837, when a building erected by the 
 community needed repairs, they sent workmen to the Point 
 without asking his permission, and incidentally they destroyed 
 a tree that he especially prized. He sent a notice to a local 
 paper, protesting against the destruction of trees on the prop 
 erty, but making no objection otherwise to the public use of 
 it. Before his notice was published the attitude of the com 
 munity on the subject proved so hostile that he substituted a 
 plain warning against trespassing, in which he stated his rigid 
 intention to enforce his title to the estate. The village had 
 actually got it into its head that the Point had been given to it 
 by Cooper s father. A mass-meeting was called, at which a 
 series of ridiculous resolutions were passed, in which the pub 
 lic ownership of the Point was claimed, Cooper s conduct was 
 described as such as to render him odious to a great portion of 
 the community, and the trustees of the Franklin Library, in 
 the village, were requested to remove from the building all 
 books of which he was author. Cooper replied in two letters 
 which completely ended the dispute so far as Cooperstown 
 was concerned. The citizens soon perceived their mistaken 
 position, though they thought no better of Cooper personally; 
 he on his part considered the mass-meeting as in no respect 
 representative of the good sense of the village. 
 
 Out of this insignificant quarrel grew the libel suits against 
 the press, which form such an interesting if not very profitable 
 episode in Cooper s career. The Chenango Telegraph, in 
 Norwich, Chenango County, published an account of the dis 
 pute, with uncomplimentary references to Cooper. The Whig 
 newspaper of Cooperstown reprinted the article, with the ad 
 dition of the village s side of the case, stated without regard 
 to the facts that Cooper had made plain. The editor refused 
 to investigate the truth of his own statements, or to retract 
 them, and the novelist brought a suit for libel, which he won 
 in May, 1839. He conducted his own case in this and most 
 
102 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 of the later suits, with the assistance of his nephew, Richard 
 Cooper; and he discovered a skill in persuading a jury that 
 was nothing short of remarkable. It was typical of his cour 
 age that he made his hard fight alone, with no assistance or 
 encouragement from any public sympathy; the juries that 
 gave him the decisions did so reluctantly, as the small dam 
 ages in each case showed. He won simply on the justice of 
 his plea. 
 
 The details of the famous suits cannot be given here. It is 
 enough to say that Cooper brought suit against the Chenango 
 Telegraph; the Oneida Whig, of Utica; the Evening Signal, of 
 New York; the Courier and Enquirer; the Albany Journal; 
 the Tribune, of New York; and the Commercial Advertiser, of 
 the same city. All of these suits Cooper won, with the ex 
 ception of that against the Courier and Enquirer, in which 
 case the jury disagreed on two trials. The suits that attracted 
 most attention were those against the Albany Evening Journal, 
 The famous editor, Thurlow Weed, committed himself to a 
 reckless policy of reprinting attacks on Cooper from other 
 papers, and Cooper systematically won damages from the 
 Journal for every libellous reprint. Such a proceeding was 
 too expensive even for the editor s enmity toward Cooper, 
 and in December, 1842, he retracted all that he had published 
 against the novelist. These suits, extending over three or 
 four years, proved Cooper s righting capacity and his sound 
 sense in legal matters, but they set him completely outside 
 the sympathy of the country at large, and the editors whom he 
 convicted of libel were apparently unconvinced of any es 
 sential untruth in what they had said. His very success nat 
 urally increased their prejudice. 
 
 During the Mile Point episode Cooper determined to write 
 a story which should present a frank picture of American so 
 ciety as he saw it. The work was not to be a satire, but as it 
 was inspired by the author s quarrel with his fellow-townsmen, 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 103 
 
 it would hardly be pleasant in tone. At first the plan in 
 cluded only the introduction of a group of foreigners to the 
 United States, and their unbiased impressions of the land; 
 but the author s friends advised him to describe the voyage to 
 America at some length. The suggestion resulted in the pub 
 lication of two books, one in August, 1837, Homeward Bound, 
 dealing with the voyage, and the other in November, Home 
 as Found, giving the study of the country. The characters 
 are the same in both, and the series makes practically one 
 story, telling of the return of Mr. Edward Emngham, his 
 daughter and his cousin to their home at Templeton Hall, on 
 Otsego Lake. The story of the voyage is an admirable tale 
 of adventure. The ship is pursued by an English war vessel, 
 is disabled in a storm, drives on the African coast and is in 
 desperate peril from Arab brigands. So exciting are the 
 events, that the interpolated discussions of America do not 
 seriously interrupt them, and the novel stands quite distinct 
 from its sequel, as one of the most interesting of his minor 
 writings. Home as Found, however, is among his least for 
 tunate works. Not only does it fail to interest as a story, 
 but it betrays a temporary lack of all reason and sense on 
 Cooper s part. His fellow-townspeople had long ago called 
 his father s house Templeton Hall, in compliment to his de 
 scription of it in The Pioneers, and when he called the Emng 
 ham home by that name, and described it as exactly the same 
 house, even to its interior decoration and furniture, it is in 
 credible that he should not have expected his readers to 
 identify the Effinghams with himself. It is needless to say 
 that this identification, which was made at once, completely 
 nullified whatever force the book might have had, and made 
 the author, for the first time in his life, indefensibly ridiculous. 
 The impression that men like Thurlow Weed and Horace 
 Greeley must have derived from the book explains perhaps 
 their later unchanged contempt for Cooper s character. 
 
104 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 This capital error in the book makes its other shortcomings 
 insignificant. Yet in spite of the unreasonableness that marks 
 almost every criticism of America in both volumes, there is a 
 kind of surface cleverness here and there which must have 
 been exasperating to the subjects of the attack. Mr. Stead 
 fast Dodge, the editor, is such a composite portrait of his 
 profession as Cooper s wrath could picture; his name was 
 significant, for there was a singular profession of steadiness 
 of purpose and of high principle about him, all of which 
 vanished in Dodge at the close." He is the chief direct sub 
 ject of the satire, and the ruthless treatment he receives at 
 Cooper s hands is illustrated by this conversation with Mr. 
 Blunt, the Englishman in Homeward Bound. 
 
 " If one man be as good as another, said Mr. Blunt, . . . 
 1 will you do me the favor to inform me, why the country puts 
 itself to the trouble and expense of the annual elections ? 
 
 "Elections, sir! In what manner could free institutions 
 flourish or be maintained, without constantly appealing to 
 the people, the only true source of power ? 
 
 " To this I make no objection, Mr. Dodge, returned the 
 young man, smiling; but why an election; if one man is as 
 good as another, a lottery would be cheaper, easier, and sooner 
 settled. Why an election, or even a lottery at all ? Why not 
 choose the President as the Persians chose their king, by the 
 neighing of a horse? 
 
 " This would be indeed an extraordinary mode of pro 
 ceeding for an intelligent and virtuous people, Mr. Blunt; and 
 I must take the liberty of saying that I suspect you of pleas 
 antry. If you wish an answer, I will say, at once, by such a 
 process we might get a knave, or a fool, or a traitor. 
 
 " How, Mr. Dodge! I did not expect this character of 
 the country from you ! Are the Americans then all fools, or 
 knaves, or traitors ? 
 
 " If you intend to travel much in our country, sir, I would 
 advise great caution in throwing out such an insinuation, for 
 it would be apt to meet with a very general and unquali 
 fied disapprobation. Americans are enlightened and free, 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 105 
 
 and as far from deserving these epithets as any people on 
 earth. 
 
 " And yet the fact follows from your own theory. If one 
 man is as good as another, and any one of them is a fool, or a 
 knave, or a traitor, all are knaves, or fools, or traitors ! 
 
 Equally clever in a superficial way is some of the satire in 
 Home as Found, though the tone of the book is too polemical 
 and ill-natured for the few bright spots to be noticed. But 
 there is a coarse kind of truth in the description of the Fourth 
 of July oration, containing "the usual allusions to Greece and 
 Rome, between the republics of which and that of this coun 
 try there exists some such affinity as is to be found between a 
 horse-chestnut and a chestnut-horse, or that of mere words; 
 and a long catalogue of national glories that might very well 
 have sufficed for all the republics, both of antiquity and of 
 our own time. But when the orator came to speak of the 
 American character, and particularly of the intelligence of 
 the nation, he was most felicitous, and made the largest in 
 vestments in popularity. According to his account of the 
 matter, no other people possessed a tithe of the knowledge, or 
 a hundredth part of the honesty and virtue of the very com 
 munity he was addressing ; and after laboring for ten minutes 
 to convince his hearers that they already knew everything, he 
 wasted several more in trying to persuade them to undertake 
 further acquisitions of the same nature." 
 
 The unfortunate thing about this kind of satire is that it 
 hits an unworthy foe; the hypocrite who is also a fool, and the 
 country orator who talks nonsense in platitudes, hardly need 
 to have a book written to point their defects. And as the au 
 thor so avowedly undertook to lecture his countrymen on their 
 faults, it is not surprising that many who were neither editors 
 nor orators felt his presumption in an almost personal way. 
 
 The enemies that his many quarrels had brought him made 
 one last attempt to crush the militant man of letters, and of 
 
io6 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 all the battles he fought, this seems the most to his credit. 
 From the time of his first success as a writer of sea tales, he 
 had planned a history of the United States navy. It was a 
 work in which both his professional pride and his patriotism 
 found every incentive, and when he was at last free to un 
 dertake it, he spared no pains to make it authoritative. It 
 was published in May, 1839. Competent critics attest its 
 thoroughness, and the court before which it came in the proc 
 ess of the quarrel it aroused, vindicated its fairness. But its 
 very fairness made trouble for Cooper. There had been for 
 some twenty years a bitter quarrel over the facts of the battle 
 of Lake Erie. Shortly after the victory a report was in general 
 circulation that Elliott, the officer second in command, had 
 been treacherous to Commander Perry, failing to assist him 
 in the critical part of the fight. Perry at first exonerated 
 Elliott from the charge, but some four or five years later 
 changed his mind. The popularity of the Commodore, and 
 his death in 1819, left Elliott with little means of righting 
 himself in the public opinion. The course he adopted was 
 very unwise, as it appeared to be self-assertion rather than de 
 fense ; he allowed a life of himself to be published in which the 
 victory at Lake Erie was attributed to his skill and courage. 
 He had indeed this support of his view, that Perry, in his first 
 approval of Elliott, had written, "I consider the circumstance 
 of your volunteering and bringing the smaller vessels up to 
 close action as contributing largely to our victory." What 
 ever bias Cooper had when he began to investigate the sub 
 ject is said to have been against Elliott, but apparently he 
 found no proof of the charges of treachery, and in his history, 
 while giving due credit to Perry, he said nothing to disparage 
 the other officer. 
 
 The attack upon the book was general, and the critics di 
 rected their fire against this one passage, claiming that in re 
 fraining from passing judgment on Elliott, Cooper had been 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 107 
 
 unpatriotic, and adding personal reflections upon the author. 
 Some of the offensive reviews were written by prominent 
 men, one in particular, appearing in the Commercial Ad 
 vertiser, of New York, by ex-president William A. Duer, of 
 Columbia College. Cooper brought a suit for libel against 
 the editor of the paper. The peculiar conduct of the case 
 shows not only Cooper s skill, but also the high motives that 
 impelled him to go to law. At the request of the defendant 
 he agreed to have the case tried, not before a jury, but before 
 three judges, who were to decide whether the review was libel 
 lous, and whether the history was fair and truthful. At the 
 trial in May, 1842, in New York, Cooper conducted his own 
 case, with a triumphant effect well described by a spectator: 
 
 "On the one hand his speech was a remarkable exhibition of 
 self-esteem, and on the other, a most interesting professional 
 argument; for when he described the battle, and illustrated 
 his views by diagrams, it was like a chapter in one of his own 
 sea-stories, so minute, graphic, and spirited was the picture 
 he drew. The dogmatism was more than compensated for 
 by the picturesqueness of the scene; his self-complacency was 
 exceeded by his wonderful ability." 
 
 The judges were asked to give their decision upon different 
 aspects of the case, making eight points in all. Every point 
 was decided in Cooper s favor, the five chief ones being de 
 cided unanimously. Some minor litigation followed, but 
 Cooper had vindicated his honor as a writer and had come to 
 the end of his public imbroglios with this victory. 
 
 VIII 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that during this period of tur 
 moil most of Cooper s writing suffered in quality. He had 
 been preoccupied with controversial ideas never the best 
 material for artistic literature; and with him more even than 
 most authors a conscious message was fatal to the story. Yet 
 
io8 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 in the midst of the libel suits he wrote two of his most notable 
 books, showing an almost incredible detachment from his 
 other interests of the moment. In The Pathfinder, published 
 in March, 1840, and The Deer slayer, published in August, 
 1841, he completed the Leatherstocking Tales in his best 
 vein of sympathy with nature, and in his richest poetic mood : 
 in the second novel particularly, the reader finds no hint of a 
 mind disturbed by petty litigation. 
 
 In The Pathfinder Cooper attempted, as he said, to bring 
 the Indian and the sailor together, in other words, to com 
 bine his two most successful veins of romance. His naval ex 
 perience on Lake Ontario gave him the needed basis in fact 
 for his tale; he laid the plot on that inland water, in the French 
 war, with one British cutter, the Scud, and Indian canoes for 
 accessories. The plan of the story is in some respects weaker 
 even than that of The Pioneers, since it has less coherence, 
 though occasionally more action; and in several places, as 
 when the cutter is in danger off the cliffs, there are feeble 
 echoes of earlier novels. But the poetical rendering of the 
 frontier, the forests and the waters, is as magical as ever, 
 indeed it sometimes reaches effects of unusual power, es 
 pecially when the characters first reach the lake, and the sea 
 man, Uncle Cap, brings out, by the contrast of his loyal 
 praise of the ocean, the unique charm of the inland sea. In 
 this one respect the book holds its place among the Leather- 
 stocking Tales; in other ways it stands quite apart from them.. 
 
 Cooper himself suspected that the juxtaposition of the sea- 
 interest with woodcraft might not have the happiest effect, 
 and his purpose to describe the movements on the lake natu 
 rally compels him to shorten that portion of the book in which 
 his genius was surest. The adventures of the scout and 
 Chingachgook, while bringing Mabel Dunham to the fort, of 
 necessity suggest the finer journey in The Last of the Mohi 
 cans, but the situation loses no interest in the repetition; such 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 109 
 
 pursuits, calling for ingenious woodcraft, never exhausted 
 Cooper s invention. But the episode is far too brief. At its 
 end, when the evolutions of the British force begin, the plot is 
 uncertain, Chingachgook practically disappears from the 
 story, and Leatherstocking ceases to display almost all his 
 characteristic virtues, save his sense, of honor and his skill 
 with the rifle. So important to the reader of the famous series 
 are the hunter and his Indian comrade, that when the peculiar 
 interest in them is relaxed, hardly any compensation redeems 
 the story; and in this case the great charm of Mabel Dunham 
 and Dew-of-June, the Indian girl, and the consistent humor 
 of Uncle Cap, the pedantic sailor, fail to make up for the rare 
 appearances of the Great Serpent or for the inferior portrayal 
 of Leatherstocking. 
 
 In this novel as well as in The Deerslayer, Cooper shows the 
 hunter in love. It goes without saying that any love-affair 
 in Leatherstocking s life would need the most delicate treat 
 ment, if the peculiar quality of his character were to be pre 
 served. In the first attempt Cooper s skill is inadequate; 
 Leatherstocking betrothed to Mabel Dunham is a highly 
 interesting and in the end a noble figure, but he is no longer 
 Leatherstocking. He has lost his poetic isolation from so 
 ciety, in the need he is made to express for "a house and a 
 furniture and a home." The wish so expressed, in terms of 
 the conventionalities he never had known, contradicts the 
 portrait of him in the other stories. And his wooing of the 
 beautiful girl so much younger than he, makes him seem less 
 sensible in human things than he is known to be at all other 
 times. In more than his love-making, however, he is changed 
 in this story. Cooper makes him much nearer to civilization 
 than in any other novel of the series; the fact that he is habit 
 ually employed by the army, and has command of the other 
 scouts, gives him a false bearing of discipline and coopera 
 tion, quite in contrast with the detached self-completeness 
 
no LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 that makes him attractive to the imagination. And with his 
 nearness to society goes a surprising acquaintance with its 
 ways; his notable piety here takes the form of quotations from 
 Scripture, though elsewhere he is illiterate, and nature is his 
 Bible. Undoubtedly his renunciation of Mabel s hand when 
 he discovers her love for Jasper, is the action of a great 
 hearted character, and the long and trying scene is one of the 
 most effective in Cooper. But in its prolixity and its elabo 
 rate courtesy it is unlike Leatherstocking, who in the other 
 stories showed latent tact whenever a delicate situation called 
 for it. And the final picture of him, cherishing for years the 
 sad memories of a blighted love, is completely out of tone 
 with his lack of sentimentality wherever else he appears. 
 
 The wonder is that Cooper should have written such a book 
 at all in those years of worriment. No less remarkable as a 
 tribute to the fascination of the story is the legend that while 
 the author was suing him, Thurlow Weed sat up all night to 
 read it. Only a comparison with the other novels of the series 
 makes this one seem tame. But such a comparison is inevi 
 table now, and the modern reader perceives the effect of dis 
 tracting worries in the author s reworking of old material, 
 in the escape to the fort, less effective than in The Last oj the 
 Mohicans; in Arrowhead, less convincing as the villain than 
 Le Renard Subtil; in the cowardly Muir, so clumsy a traitor 
 after Dillon; and in the figure of Leatherstocking standing 
 with his rifle on the deck of the cutter, so idle and out of 
 place in the contrast he there suggests with Long Tom Coffin. 
 
 In The Deer slayer Cooper recovered his old skill tenfold. 
 Parkman thought this the best of the Leatherstocking Tales, 
 and for once his judgment of Cooper can hardly be ques 
 tioned. The beautiful story of the hunter in his youth, loyal 
 to his friend, and just beginning to make his fame, shows the 
 author s powers at their highest. To have represented the 
 Deerslayer so convincingly in his days of inexperience, work- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER III 
 
 ing backwards as it were from the character as shown in The 
 Pioneers, is no less an achievement in art than to have brought 
 the character to its logical old age. As the Leatherstocking 
 Tales are now read, in their proper order, the mysterious 
 youth, already separated from the habitual society of his race, 
 and leagued with the Delaware chief, has certain virtues in a 
 crude form, which elevate and explain his actions in the later 
 books. His love of truth is here most complete and most "im 
 portant to his welfare, from the moment when he refuses to 
 alter his speech though Hurry Harry threatens to strangle 
 him, to his last words with Judith a parting that brought 
 out his delicacy as well as his honor. And in his first en 
 counters with the Indians, here described, the process by 
 which his truthfulness and his skill became established among 
 them as a proverb, is made to seem more natural and less a 
 matter of fiction than several later exhibitions of his prowess; 
 and what boy reader, or what reader who still knows the 
 secret of the joy of adventure, would give up the history of 
 Killdeer and the account of its coming into the hunter s pos 
 session ! 
 
 The Deer slayer s inexperience is charmingly used to de 
 scribe the beautiful lake as he first sees it. The fresh joy in 
 nature, which gives the story a peculiarly youthful zest, is 
 felt through the character of the hunter, who has never be 
 fore met with such a panorama of water and forest, and whose 
 delighted amazement has no opportunity of abating before 
 the story closes. Hurry Harry, in his rough way, notices the 
 Deerslayer s admiration of the lake, and at the other end of 
 the book Judith has it in mind when she would persuade the 
 youth never to leave the region. But Cooper manages to let 
 us feel a finer taste in his hero, parallel to his loftier moral 
 sense, which makes his enjoyment of the perfect scene un 
 shared to any great extent by his companions. Hurry Harry 
 and old Hutter, with their villainous commercial schemes, 
 
112 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 represent the opposite extreme of susceptibility; in between 
 come the Indian and Judith and Hetty, but their private in 
 terests for the time are more to them than fine landscape. 
 Chingachgook wins his bride, and Judith s passion finds a 
 tragic end; but the Deerslayer is shown falling in love with 
 nature, and through him the reader sees the lake and the 
 forest in a transfigured charm, through a lover s eyes. 
 
 Like the last of the Leatherstocking Tales, this first story, 
 though full of action, is confined to one spot, and there is, 
 properly speaking, no chase or pursuit. As in The Last 0} the 
 Mohicans, there is very little woodcraft. The plot busies it 
 self with the characters in the "castle" on the lake, and with 
 those in the Indian camp; the escape of the ark from the 
 river, the pursuit of the girls in the canoe, and Deerslayer s 
 attempt to flee from the Indian camp, are subordinate epi 
 sodes, and are felt to be such in the reading. But the lack of 
 movement on a large scale is more than compensated for by 
 the personal prowess of the characters in hand-to-hand en 
 counter. The courage of all the men in entering the Indian 
 camp though the motives vary with their different natures 
 gives a certain credit even to Hutter and Hurry Harry. Chin- 
 gachgook s exploit in carrying off Hist is breathless, and the 
 excitement takes on a noble interest when the Deerslayer as 
 sures the venture of success by the sacrifice of his freedom. 
 And hardly less interesting is Hetty s simple trust, which 
 makes her an unharmed visitor at the Indian camp-fires, or 
 Judith s audacious strategy, that sought to rescue the Deer- 
 slayer by the sheer force of her great beauty. Of all the 
 Leatherstocking episodes, none is worked out with greater 
 variety of effect, or with more sustained power, than the 
 fight with the Iroquois in the castle. From the moment when 
 Hist discovers the floating mocassin and suspects the ambush, 
 the suspense is terrific, and the actual events which follow the 
 powerful premonition of danger, are more than sufficient for 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 113 
 
 a satisfactory climax; the rescue of Harry, and the discovery 
 that Hutter has been scalped, have the true thrill of romance, 
 for all their melodramatic traits. And the final scene of the 
 book, the charge of the soldiers and the destruction of the 
 Indian force, is one of the most telling closes in Cooper s plots; 
 all the picturesque possibilities of the situation have been ex 
 hausted, Deerslayer at the stake, Chingachgook appearing 
 in the midst of his enemies, bringing his friend s rifle, and 
 Judith in her superb beauty masquerading as a queen, have 
 brought the story to a point where only a big effect will not 
 seem anticlimax, and the steady tramp of the redcoats, in 
 final contrast to the undisciplined fighting throughout the 
 plot, ends all the picturesque dangers with a still more pic 
 turesque display of justice and order. 
 
 When Cooper made much of the Deerslayer s first mortal 
 combat, describing at length his talk with his dying enemy and 
 his assuming of the name Hawkeye, he was guided by a true 
 artist s sense. In all the other books of the series Leather- 
 stocking s rifle brought certain death to his Indian enemies; 
 though he takes no life willingly, his skill in his prime is 
 chiefly shown on human victims. However satisfactory such 
 skill might seem in the experienced Indian fighter, it would 
 have prejudiced the other virtues of his character to show him 
 so deadly a fighter in his youth. The impression Deerslayer, 
 so represented, would have made upon the reader is made in 
 the story by Hurry Harry, who has the true frontiersman s 
 faith in a dead Indian. We see the hardening process of ex 
 perience, which compels the peaceful-minded hunter to put 
 aside his qualms of conscience, and for his own safety become 
 a slayer of men, in the rough world his destiny leads him to. 
 The temper in which he accepts the necessity is highly fatalis 
 tic, partly as a result of a frontier environment, and partly as 
 his peculiar nature dictates; we see him here in process of 
 learning to accept the inevitable race-conflict, as in the later 
 
H4 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 books we see that acceptance become habitual. But in this 
 picture of his youth the adjustment to inevitable conditions is 
 accompanied by much disillusion. Along with Deerslayer s 
 discovery of these special charms of nature, comes his dis 
 covery of the cruelty of Hurry Harry, the sordidness of old 
 Hutter, and most tragic for him the evil that has cursed 
 Judith s beauty. The integrity of his simple character could 
 not be permanently shaken by the knowledge of good and 
 evil, but Cooper, whose skill in analyzing the soul is not usu 
 ally great, makes it quite clear that Deerslayer did not come 
 through the ordeal unscathed; he returned to the Delaware 
 village "in a sorrow that it required months of activity to re 
 move." In all the other Leatherstocking Tales the hero 
 gives his services to the deserving and the good, young or old; 
 here in the flush of youth he is the protector of the most beau 
 tiful woman, who is at the same time the most unworthy, he 
 ever met. He is more perfectly humanized as a hero of ro 
 mance by his encounter with Judith than by his love for 
 Mabel Dunham, and it must be regretted that Cooper attrib 
 uted to him the second and unconvincing passion. 
 
 In Hurry Harry and Thomas Hutter are depicted again the 
 adventurous forerunners of civilization, such as were shown 
 in The Pioneers. But in The Deerslayer these waifs of society 
 gain by being fewer in number, and their characters are more 
 firmly and completely studied. Hutter is one of Cooper s 
 most interesting minor characters interesting for his strange 
 dwelling and his amphibious habits, but still more for the 
 mystery of his past and for his unknown relation to Judith 
 and Hetty. For once Cooper finds the frontier romance, not 
 in the frontiersman s prowess on the line of civilization, but 
 in the hidden circumstance that impelled him to leave es 
 tablished society. This vein of romance is more frequently 
 worked, of course, in Scott; a somewhat similar mystery sur 
 rounds Mertoun, in The Pirate. But Cooper keeps the fron- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 115 
 
 tier note of truth by disclosing nothing of Hutter s secret, 
 even at the end of the story; as Hurry Harry makes plain to 
 Deerslayer, it is the etiquette of the border to ask no embar 
 rassing questions. 
 
 IX 
 
 With the publication of The Deerslayer Cooper s best work 
 was over. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that no book 
 he wrote afterwards has even a slight hold on fame, with the 
 exception of Wing and Wing. It is supposed that the prolific 
 succession of novels continuing almost till his death were in 
 tended to make up certain financial losses he had suffered in 
 investments and cotton speculation. To what extent they 
 succeeded in this purpose, it is now impossible to tell, but they 
 clearly suffered from the marked speed of their production. 
 Then, too, Cooper s genius was aging fast; he had exhausted 
 his vein, and he was too old to find a new one. The mere 
 mention of the titles of his last books is in most cases all the 
 notice they deserve. 
 
 To the end of his days, Cooper had the faculty of fixing on 
 rich themes, though he no longer could work them out. Mer 
 cedes o) Castile, published in November, 1840, is an historical 
 romance, with the first voyage of Columbus for its main inci 
 dent. Cooper was quick to see the possibilities here for a sea- 
 story, and for a picture of the Indians as white men first knew 
 them. But the voyage does not begin until one quarter of the 
 volume is past, and the part played by the Ozema, the Indian 
 whom Columbus brings back to Spain, does not rank the 
 character with his earlier work. For all its fine idea, the story 
 is tiresome. Much the same criticism applies to The Two 
 Admirals, published in April, 1842. The long and tedious 
 introduction spoils the story for most readers, though it should 
 have proved interesting. Cooper here attempted to describe 
 the manceuvers of large fleets, rather than the adventures of 
 
Ii6 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 single ships, and in the moments of real action the plot be 
 comes as exciting as he alone could make such ocean adven 
 tures. But in his best sea tales the interest is focused upon 
 one vessel, often upon only one part of it; the difficulty of 
 keeping whole fleets before the reader s attention would be 
 great for any author, and particularly for Cooper, whose 
 genius lacked much organizing faculty. The result is that the 
 story is at its best only when the fleet as a whole is neglected 
 for a single ship, as when in the last battle the fight on the 
 Plantagenet is described. 
 
 In Wing and Wing, which appeared later in the same year, 
 Cooper repeated with variations the sea-story told in The Red 
 Rover and The Water Witch, that is, he gave once more an 
 account of an outlaw vessel of great speed, with a commander 
 of personal charm and miraculous skill. The plot is laid 
 off the shores of Elba, and the outlaw captain, Raoul, is a 
 French corsair. The loss of the lugger and the death of its 
 commander give the story a tragic end, and the figure of Nel 
 son in command of the English fleet raises the narrative to a 
 place of some importance among Cooper s historical ro 
 mances; but the familiar elements of chases, running fights 
 and wrecks, can be found to far better advantage in The Pilot 
 or The Red Rover. 
 
 In September, 1843, appeared Wyandotte; or the Hutted 
 Knoll, one of the most curious experiments that poor judg 
 ment could allow an author to make. In this novel Cooper 
 actually attempts to tell another story in the same scenes and 
 almost in the same period as The Pioneers. Wyandotte deals 
 with the settlement of a claim in the neighborhood of Otsego, 
 just before and during the Revolutionary War. Of course 
 there is no Leatherstocking to give his peculiar interest to the 
 story, and the society pictured is not only less interesting than 
 that of the earlier book, but it is entirely different; it has the 
 effect not only of failing to justify itself, but of casting some 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 117 
 
 suspicion upon the historical accuracy of the account of the 
 frontier in The Pioneers. The novel has never been read 
 enough, however, to be reckoned with seriously. Nor is there 
 need to mention the following stories, published in 1844, 
 Afloat and Ashore, and its sequel, Miles Wallingjord, except 
 to say that the hero tells his own adventures, and the autobio 
 graphical manner is so pleasant as to offset somewhat a long 
 and tiresome tale. In all these later novels Cooper s piety 
 took the form of dogmatic references to church and religion, 
 and his heroes became frankly prigs. His life had not been 
 such as to enrich his nature with charitable sympathies, and 
 his opinions were not softened in his last years, as Scott s 
 were, by universal love and admiration. 
 
 The three following novels, Satanstoe, in June, 1845, The 
 Chainbearer, in November of the same year, and The Red 
 skins, in July, 1846, though worthless as stories, illustrate ad 
 mirably Cooper s patriotism and his love of justice. The 
 series pretends to follow the fortunes of the Littlepage family 
 through several generations, and the subject of all three books 
 is the relation of landlord and tenant, with direct reference to 
 the anti-rent troubles in New York State in the years follow 
 ing 1839. If there is any difference, the last of the series 
 makes the most hopeless reading, for in that volume Cooper 
 concentrated his main discussion of the economic question, 
 but all three books are fatally enfeebled by the author s ethi 
 cal purposes. In the prefaces, however, he writes most ef 
 fectively of the question itself and of his object in dealing 
 with it, and perhaps he has nowhere better stated his personal 
 ideal of good citizenship than in the conclusion of the preface 
 to Satanstoe: 
 
 "For ourselves, we conceive that true patriotism consists in 
 laying bare everything like public vice, and in calling such 
 things by their right names. The great enemy of the race has 
 made a deep inroad upon us, within the last ten or a dozen 
 
Ii8 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 years, under cover of a spurious delicacy on the subject of ex 
 posing national ills; and it is time that they who have not been 
 afraid to praise, when praise was merited, should not shrink 
 from the office of censuring, when the want of timely warn 
 ings may be one cause of the most fatal evils. The great 
 practical defect of institutions like ours, is the circumstance 
 that what is everybody s business, is nobody s business, a 
 neglect that gives to the activity of the rogue a very dangerous 
 ascendency over the more dilatory corrections of the honest 
 man." 
 
 Cooper s last stories were The Crater, October, 1847, a 
 study of social conditions as illustrated by a handful of ad 
 venturers on a Pacific island; Jack Tier, March, 1848, a sea 
 tale of the Red Rover type, with changes that may be imagined 
 from the circumstance that the mistress of the Corsair, dis 
 guised as a boy, is here represented by the deserted wife of 
 Stephen Spike, who to find her husband adopts the character 
 of Jack Tier; The Oak Openings, August, 1848, a story 
 founded on a western journey Cooper had made the year be 
 fore; The Sea Lions, April, 1849, a ta ^ e f Antarctic adventure; 
 and The Ways of the Hour, April, 1850, an attack upon the 
 system of trial by jury. In these years Cooper also finished 
 less important pieces, and in 1850 he wrote a comedy, Upside 
 Down; or, Philosophy in Petticoats, which was acted for three 
 nights in New York. 
 
 His last years were spent happily at Cooperstown. Some 
 of the old rancour had begun to fade, and before he died a 
 movement was on foot to honor him with a public dinner; 
 already his fame was mellowing with the gratitude of a world 
 of readers. In 1850, in the summer, he went to New York 
 City, where his splendid appearance was remarked and re 
 membered. Early in the next year his health began to fail. 
 On September 14, 1851, he died at Cooperstown. His wife, 
 who had made his home a lifelong world of happiness, out 
 lived him only four months. 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 119 
 
 It is not difficult to see now why Cooper, in spite of his great 
 services to his country, " deserving well of it," as Thackeray 
 said, has enjoyed little personal honor. His character has 
 become fixed in a tradition of tactlessness and love of quarrel 
 ing, which has rendered him with much injustice, a somewhat 
 unlovable figure. It is probable, as time goes on, that the 
 sterling worth of his Americanism will win a broader credit, 
 and the lofty ideals of the man will atone, as they should, for 
 the excess of militant criticism that bred up detractors from 
 his fame. That he was almost invariably on the right side 
 can hardly be disputed, and no other American man of letters, 
 not even Lowell, gave his genius so passionately and so con 
 tinuously to the welfare of his country and the prospering of 
 the cause of humanity. 
 
 It is clear, however, that Cooper s fame now rests on prac 
 tically seven books The Spy, The Pilot and the Leather- 
 stocking Tales. Whatever he wrote with specific purpose, in 
 behalf of justice or for the glorification of national pride, is 
 now allowed by the general reader to rest on the shelves un 
 disturbed; but Harvey Birch, Long Tom Coffin and Leather- 
 stocking still delight the world, and probably will continue to 
 do so as long as the novel is an acceptable form of entertain 
 ment. In these seven books is the real Cooper, untroubled by 
 a conscious purpose; here are displayed best his love of na 
 ture, his zest for physical adventure, his admiration for sturdy 
 manhood; and here unconsciously he finds expression for the 
 rich vein of poetry that colored his practical knowledge of 
 life. 
 
 The term " artist" hardly applies to Cooper, in whatever 
 aspect his writing is considered; his great successes, artistic 
 as they are, follow from intuition more than from conscious 
 control of the effects. Yet any writer so prolific must for 
 
120 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 economy s sake follow beaten paths, even in his intuitive mo 
 ments, and these seven best novels show as a whole Cooper s 
 "methods," if the word may be used of the natural habit of 
 his mind in dealing with narrative material. Whatever liter 
 ary influence appears in this habit, comes from Scott, though 
 in many respects the very use of similar methods and material 
 usually emphasizes Cooper s originality. 
 
 These seven novels follow the general plan of such ro 
 mances as Waverley and Ivanhoe and Rob Roy. Perhaps the 
 most important resemblance is in the ultra-romantic hero, 
 touched with the extreme individuality that marked the first 
 years of the nineteenth century, and became fixed in the typ 
 ical isolated hero of Byron or Shelley. As Robin Hood and 
 Rob Roy and Mclvor stand apart from the main interests of 
 the plot, fatally yet not altogether disagreeably detached from 
 society, so Harvey Birch, Long Tom Coffin and Leather- 
 stocking are lonely men, whose relation to their race, for some 
 inward reason of the spirit, is limited and casual. The rest 
 less aspiration of the new age found its image in wanderers 
 and explorers of the frontiers of thought in the hero of Alas- 
 tor, and in Childe Harold; and in America it found its expres 
 sion in these prose parallels of Cooper s. But however else 
 the imaginative exiles in the English poems may have superi 
 ority, Birch and Coffin, and especially Leatherstocking, ex 
 cel in a certain effect of permanence, not matched even by 
 Robin Hood or Rob Roy. It was Cooper s unique fortune to 
 place his lonely wanderers, explorers along the frontiers of 
 the spirit, on an actual frontier, which actually represented in 
 our national history those forces of democracy and civiliza 
 tion which Shelley dealt with in a dream world. The Amer 
 ican frontier, moving westward from Leatherstocking s 
 youth in New York to his death on the prairie, is the only 
 frontier in modern times marking the progress of the race 
 mind ; its consequent advantage in dignity over the delightful 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 121 
 
 frontier Mr. Kipling has pictured for us, or the newer frontier 
 of Africa, as the novelist of to-day uses it, hardly needs men 
 tion. Robin Hood and Rob Roy are the most attractive of 
 border ruffians; but the vast human destinies flooding along 
 the American border make such types trivial in comparison. 
 Cooper belongs to the new day; the America he loved was 
 of the future; he never represents the frontier without a faith 
 ful picture of the men who were leading the race westward. 
 Only it should be noticed that he paints such men as they are 
 Harry March, or Marmaduke Temple and his cousin the 
 sheriff, rough and incomplete men, heroic merely by virtue 
 of the great causes they unconsciously serve. The heroes he 
 idealized are the finer spirits, that feel the unrest rather than 
 the achievements of progress who wistfully contemplate the 
 final evolved perfection, but feel hopeless agony in the proc 
 ess. This is the mood of Shelley s hero and Byron s; it is the 
 mood of Harvey Birch, and most of all, of Leatherstocking, 
 and if the old hunter at his best seems ill-equipped intellectu 
 ally to fill a place beside the poetic types, after all it is in mood 
 and spirit, not in brain, that a character is one with his age. 
 
 If Leatherstocking and his fellows suggest in their lone 
 liness Scott s border chiefs and outlaws, there is at the same 
 time a striking difference. To Scott the border was a fixed 
 thing, an unchanging zone through centuries of stirring inci 
 dent; though the edge of progressing society was the scene of 
 danger and conflict, the romance of it accumulated in one 
 spot, and came to suggest long-memoried age rather than 
 the eternal novelty of youth. The American frontier moved 
 rapidly, never pausing long enough for its legends to take deep 
 root in any one place, and changing its character as it moved, 
 so that the legends of it in any two places are different. In 
 each of the Leatherstocking tales a special and distinct 
 world is pictured, and no one of them resembles the frontier 
 that Bret Harte knew. There was hardly time for more than 
 
122 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 one writer to record any one phase of the American border 
 life before it underwent its next transformation; so that the 
 fortunate chronicler of it is master of an unassailable realm. 
 But the shifting line brought Cooper a special advantage. 
 His genius was at its best when dealing with a changing scene, 
 with the rapid movement of a chase or pursuit. He alone of 
 novelists has sought to represent the frontier, not in a sta 
 tionary cross-section, but in its natural passage from change 
 to change. The whole series of the Leatherstocking Tales is 
 therefore a pursuit civilization in its uncouth outworks over 
 taking the beauty and innocence of nature; and the eternal 
 embarrassment of the human heart between love of the un 
 spoiled world and approval of civilized progress, is made into 
 a living person, Leatherstocking. Virgil, the nature-poet of 
 the Old World, felt the sorrow of the problem in the spoiling 
 of his beloved Italy, and personified it in Camilla. Far as the 
 distance seems from Rome to Otsego Lake, it would be hard 
 to find a third figure, equally significant and poetic, between 
 the Italian Amazon and Leatherstocking. 
 
 Cooper s frontier had another advantage in the presence of 
 the Indians at practically every stage of it. Scott had his 
 Highlanders for picturesqueness and loyalty, but they repre 
 sented to the mind only a lower stage of civilization, not a 
 distinct race, and the ultra-romantic hero, wedded to a Quixo 
 tic cause, was usually one of their number. The American 
 Indian has these important qualities for romance, that he is 
 quite distinct from the race advancing upon him, and yet in 
 some of the best qualities of that race he is undeniably su 
 perior. And the circumstance of his fate condemned by the 
 rapidity of the frontier s approach to accept and digest all of 
 civilization at once, to pass in little more than a generation 
 from ignorance of an alphabet to the use of electricity, in 
 vests him with a romantic pity as well as admiration. So 
 tempting is the subject, that from the appearance of Park- 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 123 
 
 man s famous essay Cooper s Indians have been charged 
 with unreality; they have been called creatures of romance, or 
 at best, of improbability. Their wonderful fascination could 
 not be denied even by Parkman, for his own remarkable 
 studies were inspired by his youthful enthusiasm for Cooper. 
 But even more than that, it is fortunately becoming the fash 
 ion among critics to see that Cooper said little, if anything, 
 of the Indians that was not strictly true. He paints the sav 
 age s treachery and cruelty in unequivocal colors; even his 
 "good Indians" have the traits that set them off from the 
 white man s complete sympathy. And the good Indians 
 themselves, Chingachgook and Uncas, are shown to be singu 
 lar exceptions. By portraying the moving border, Cooper is 
 able to show the changes in Indian condition, parallel to the 
 changes among the white frontiersmen; so the Sioux are dif 
 ferent in many ways from the Iroquois, and within the single 
 nation of the Delawares, the aged Tamenund represents an 
 already forgotten type of character. And in the individual 
 Indian, Chingachgook, who in his own race stands for the 
 same isolation, the same devotion to an ideal, as Leather- 
 stocking, the remorseless picture of drunken ruin ought to 
 convince the most fastidious critic that Cooper did not ideal 
 ize the red man. 
 
 Besides his ultra-romantic hero, Cooper, like Scott, has a 
 moderately interesting hero Duncan Hey ward, for example, 
 to correspond to Frank Osbaldistone or Waverley. These 
 young men are frankly in Scott s vein. They are chivalric, 
 energetic and manly, but not clever, and their part in the 
 story is never one of great initiative. They are simply ad 
 mirable citizens, born to ornament a settled, polished society, 
 and their presence on the frontier serves both for a foil to the 
 mental isolation of the ultra-romantic hero, as in Scott, and 
 for encouragement to a faith in the advancing civilization 
 which they represent. That they do represent the future, is 
 
124 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 felt in the sense of vital youth which Cooper manages to give 
 them, which always makes Leatherstocking seem in com 
 parison old and outdistanced. It must have been by the in 
 tuition of genius that the novelist drew no such character in 
 The Deerslayer, where he wished Leatherstocking to seem 
 young; the comparison would have been to his disadvantage. 
 Cooper s heroines, too, have much resemblance to Scott s, 
 though Parknun also set the fashion to see little true or in 
 teresting in the American writer s ideals of femininity. Pro 
 fessor Lounsbury in his admirable biography gives Parkman s 
 point of view better support than it deserves, holding that 
 these ladies are insufferable bores with their correctness, their 
 stilted talk, and their insipidity. Mr. W. C. Brownell in his 
 recent acute essay on Cooper takes the other side with con 
 vincing power, pointing out the genuineness of feminine 
 portraiture in the novels, the real though quiet charm of 
 Cooper s ideal, and the occasional grandeur of a character 
 like Judith Hutter, who Parkman himself admitted was the 
 finest woman Cooper drew. It must be confessed at once 
 that Cooper portrayed no such glorious creatures as Di 
 Vernon or Catherine Seyton. He had known no such women 
 in life, and his ideas were always founded strictly on the so 
 ciety he knew. But he had known women of strong character 
 and charming manners, and he drew them in Katherine 
 Plowden, Sarah Wharton and Cora Munro a list which 
 could be lengthened, and which hardly needs defense against 
 criticism. It is evident, however, that Cooper s knowledge of 
 feminine character is limited to very few types. He follows 
 Scott in representing an ultra-romantic heroine, such as Alice 
 Dunscombe, in The Pilot, or Isabella Singleton, in The Spy; 
 like Flora Mclvor, they have a mysterious career and a tragic 
 end; they probably owe their existence to Cooper s reading, 
 for he could hardly have met them in the America of his time. 
 They are the product of the Byron influence in Scott, in whose 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 125 
 
 romantic world they are natural and intelligible, but in Coo 
 per, whose sense for the real is so strong, they never quite 
 ring true. His best heroines, on the average, belong in a 
 second type to be paralleled in Scott girls of much sense and 
 strong emotions but without any abnormal brilliancy, like 
 Frances Wharton. This type of womanhood had been glori 
 fied in Scott s novels to the same extent as the corresponding 
 sort of hero, full of sense and energy, but not unusual. Since 
 it represents the normal character, Cooper must have known 
 many examples of it; at least we can indulge a conviction that 
 the type had his admiration, from the prominent place it usu 
 ally holds in the center of his stage. It seems, however, that 
 Parkman, and Professor Lounsbury after him, would have 
 us believe that Cooper s preference was for the fragile, cling 
 ing creatures, ranging in the scale of intelligence from Alice 
 Munro to Hetty Hutter. The extreme type of innocence, 
 usually shown in a younger sister or close relative, does occur 
 frequently in Cooper s novels, and is represented with a charm 
 not to be lightly regarded even to-day by the reader who ad 
 mires old-fashioned gentleness and breeding. But Cooper is 
 too good a story-teller to put the weight of the plot upon such 
 delicate creatures, and he knew his subject too well to picture 
 them as average examples of American womanhood. His 
 best heroines have more initiative and a more passionate in 
 terest in life. By far the best is Judith Hutter, whose complex 
 nature he has drawn with power and delicacy. No discrimi 
 nating reader can pass lightly over the great scenes in which 
 she tells her love to Deerslayer. No modern analyst of the 
 feminine heart could indicate with more skill and dignity the 
 effort that went to her self -confession, or the agony she en 
 dured from the hunter s rejection of her offer. 
 
 Cooper follows Scott and the other romancers in his in 
 variable use of the villain. If he portrays no elaborate wicked 
 ness to match Rashleigh s character, in Rob Roy, at least his 
 
126 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 villains are unmistakably bad, and in one or two instances 
 they have as great individuality. In the portrayal of evil, as 
 in everything else, Cooper s genius works most effectively on 
 the frontier, and Le Renard Subtil, the Indian enemy in The 
 Last of the Mohicans, is easily his most successful embodi 
 ment of wickedness. He availed himself of the Indian quali 
 ties of shrewdness and treachery, to paint a figure which 
 should be almost diabolical, and yet perfectly natural, 
 which perhaps is more than can be said for Rashleigh. Le 
 Renard s cruel determination to possess Cora, his device for 
 luring her into the forest by carrying off her sister Alice, and 
 the satisfaction he has in stabbing Uncas, are nothing short of 
 devilish, yet the circumstances of his race, and his treatment 
 at the hands of Cora s father and Chingachgook, make his 
 conduct inevitable rather than incomprehensible. He is the 
 finest of Cooper s villains because the evil in him is joined 
 with a great capacity and a noble scale of action, and he is not 
 a coward. The original injustice of the harsh treatment that 
 made him the Englishman s foe, almost turns the reader s 
 sympathy to him, and in places the general sense Cooper has 
 of the rights of the Indians to the land, serves to render Le 
 Renard, as well as Chingachgook, an object of pity; and the 
 ethical poise of the story becomes unsteady, as a greater 
 mind than Cooper s once found, when he sang of Satan s de 
 fiance of the eternal justice. In The Spy the Skinner is an 
 even more picturesque villain, if possible, than Le Renard, 
 but he is a coward, and his wickedness has no excuse. Dillon, 
 in The Pilot, stirs some pity by the very meanness of his 
 nature, but the strongest interest he excites is through his re 
 lation to Long Tom Coffin. 
 
 The element of horror, of mental and physical fear, had a 
 large place in the early romances, and literary skill in dealing 
 with it shows a steady increase from the Mysteries of Udolpho 
 to the morbid triumphs of Poe. Scott s sturdy mind accepted 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 127 
 
 horror only as it came in the natural way of adventure, as one 
 of the incidents of a romantic life. So the drowning of Mor 
 ris, in Rob Roy, gives the effect of horror by actual physical 
 events, in broad daylight something to be seen and, as soon 
 as possible, forgotten, not brooded upon. Scott s good taste 
 as an artist led him to limit this effect to one occurrence in 
 each story; otherwise the force of it would be blunted. Cooper 
 follows Scott s custom in making the effect through physical 
 means, and in limiting himself to a rare use of it, but his skill 
 in making the scene real was greater than Scott s, and some 
 of his earliest critics found fault with him for a too dreadful 
 facility in inspiring terror. Though we should not now care 
 to give up such powerful scenes, we may concede some truth 
 to the criticisms, remembering such haunting episodes as old 
 Birch s death, the hanging of the Skinner, the execution of 
 Abiram White, the harpooning of the English captain, and the 
 retreat from Fort William Henry. 
 
 Cooper s pedants, or bores, of whom enough has been said 
 already, are also direct descendants of the talkative, officious 
 pedants Scott loved to draw. Bailie Jarvie, in Rob Roy, is the 
 model of the class, yet as soon as the name is mentioned, the 
 lover of Scott feels the superior richness of character which he 
 discovers in his bores. The type perhaps appealed to Cooper 
 because of its satire upon ofnciousness. In his imitation of it, 
 much of the sweetness is lost, especially as the years of con 
 troversy embittered his opinion of the race; only Gamut and 
 Dr. Sitgreaves, of all their class, are really pleasant compan 
 ions. But to say this is only to repeat that Cooper had little 
 humor and no delicacy of satire. 
 
 In one respect Cooper differs widely from Scott, and loses 
 by the comparison. In common with most American novel 
 ists, he had little gift for dialogue. His unconsciousness of 
 the defect is one of the chief causes of his occasional tiresome 
 ness in his inferior novels, where he tries to indicate character 
 
128 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 by conversation, or to reproduce dialect. All his characters 
 speak a stilted literary prose, not to be disguised by Indian 
 interjections, nor by Leatherstocking s formal breaches of 
 grammar, such as his "used to could." The voice and the 
 style is Cooper s throughout : if there is any difference in the 
 novels, the preference in this respect must be given to the 
 earlier ones, for in the later stories the talk becomes con 
 stantly more ponderous and undistinguished. 
 
 An ultra-romantic hero, and a more commonplace hero, 
 matched by the ultra-romantic and the more normal heroines; 
 a villain; and a pedant, these are the people to be met in the 
 best Cooper stories, and as the types are named over, his re 
 semblance or indebtedness to Scott is clear. The world he 
 describes is the frontier, and the plot involves a chase, with 
 one moment of horror. The simplicity of these elements is 
 the index of the writer s character. The inventory of his 
 literary equipment is short; he is neither a great bookman, 
 nor a philosopher, nor a historian; he is nothing but a story 
 teller. After the fashion of practical minds, he observed and 
 represented life as an experience not necessarily complex; in 
 private life he recognized no situation that a prompt applica 
 tion of the ten commandments would not solve. But he had 
 for humanity at large a vast sympathy, for the expression of 
 which his intellectual equipment was inadequate; and he 
 loved his country with a fervor hardly matched again among 
 American men of letters. It was his patriotism that made his 
 success in literature. Whatever he learned from Scott was 
 changed into something new by the complete Americanism of 
 his mind, and the American landscape, his lifelong passion, 
 colored even his pictures of the Old World. To say that he was 
 not an artist, or that he had no style, is to leave his quality 
 untouched. He had American character, which he stamped 
 on everything he wrote, and which he made familiar to all 
 peoples. Through his pages our gaunt pine forests, our 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 129 
 
 charmed lakes, and our mysterious prairies were added once 
 for all to the geography of the human imagination; in his 
 stories a romantic and fast dying race were rescued to the re 
 membrance of every reading nation, so that through him boy 
 hood the world over "plays Indian"; he created the most 
 typical figure in the novel of his age, the frontiersman, and 
 setting him on the most romantic border our civilization re 
 calls, endowed him with American ideals of justice and effi 
 ciency, and with something of American fatalism. Leather- 
 stocking is one of the heroic figures of the world s fiction, 
 one of its prizemen; Thackeray spoke truth when he said 
 that Cooper deserves well of us. 
 

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 
 
 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, like Cooper, is a story-teller. 
 He did for the Southwestern border what Cooper did for the 
 Northern frontier and what Bret Harte was later to do for 
 California. Simms has suffered somewhat in the rating of 
 critics because he so strongly resembles Cooper, just as 
 Cooper has suffered for his resemblances to Scott. The two 
 American writers have this in common with the great ro 
 mancer, that they were masters of story-telling rather than 
 thinkers or scholars, they were poets in their idealism, and 
 they used their immediate country and its history for the 
 scenes and plots of their tales. Beyond this it is uncritical to 
 press their similarities. Simms was ready enough to acknowl 
 edge his indebtedness to Cooper. The admiration he ex 
 pressed for him when the New York writer was not personally 
 beloved by his countrymen is chivalry at its best. But Simms 
 had a personality of his own a noble one, and it is much to 
 the interest of American literature to remember him in his 
 own right. 
 
 His boyhood, in its way, was as romantic and as favorable 
 to the fostering of genius as Scott s or Cooper s, having a 
 large element of that not unhappy loneliness which seems re 
 served for imaginative boys destined to be great. His father, 
 after whom he was named, was an Irish semi-genius of much 
 temperament, who came to Charleston, South Carolina, just 
 after the Revolution, and in 1804 married a Miss Harriet 
 Ann Augusta Singleton, some twenty years his junior. Their 
 
132 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 second child, William Gilmore, was born in Charleston, 
 April 17, 1806. Two years later the mother died, shortly 
 after the death of the first child. The father had been over 
 taken by business troubles which ended in bankruptcy, and 
 in a fit of desperation, apparently, he disappeared into the 
 wilderness of Tennessee, leaving his surviving child to the care 
 of its maternal grandmother. 
 
 This Mrs. Singleton, left a widow, had married again and 
 was now Mrs. Gates. It is extremely unlikely that any cal 
 culation ever prompted the more than Celtic actions of the 
 elder Simms, but if he had been the coldest and shrewdest of 
 men he could hardly have left his infant son in better hands. 
 As the boy grew up he heard from his grandmother s lips 
 stories of the great war for freedom, which she had witnessed, 
 stories which in her fashion of remembering and telling 
 had perhaps already assumed the quality of legends. Mrs. 
 Gates was a generous woman and brought up the child to 
 think well of his wandering father, who wrote few letters, but 
 those always full of border adventure. Scott himself can 
 hardly have absorbed more stories in his childhood, nor 
 gloated over tales of adventure nearer in family history. 
 
 When he was six years old the boy was sent to a public 
 school, which from his own account was not all that a school 
 should be. An old Irishman who taught him to spell, read 
 tolerably, and write a pretty good hand, was the best teacher 
 he had, "and he knew little." There was no one who knew 
 enough to teach arithmetic. After two years of this system, 
 which Simms in later years described as " worthless and 
 scoundrelly," he had a few years more in private schools, and 
 so ended his formal education. But the meagerness of this 
 training was balanced by a great love of books, which re 
 acted as it usually does with such natures, in a love of writing. 
 Before he was thirteen he wrote verses on the war of 1812, and 
 ; by that time he was enthralled by Scott, Byron and Moore, and 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 133 
 
 probably by many others of the English poets. In prose The 
 Pilgrim s Progress and The Vicar of Wakefield were early 
 and lasting favorites. When his school days were over he was 
 apprenticed to a druggist, with some idea that he might study 
 medicine. But his real studies were conducted at night after 
 he was supposed to be asleep, when he read good books by 
 the light of a candle stuck in a box, this not very black de 
 ception being made necessary by Mrs. Gates disposition in 
 favor of early hours. 
 
 About this time his father returned, making his coming felt 
 in a startling way. He evidently wanted to see his son and 
 doubted if the grandmother would part with him, so to make 
 sure, it is said, he tried to kidnap the boy on the street. The 
 attempt failed, more formal negotiations were opened in 
 court, and young Simms had his choice of going or staying. 
 He wisely enough chose to stay with his grandmother, and the 
 father, in complete good humor, paid them a visit in 1816 or 
 1817. What the visit meant to the boy can easily be imagined. 
 The father whom he had idealized as borderer and Indian 
 fighter was now for a while his companion, a handsome 
 man, with wit and the gift of verse-making, and with innumer 
 able adventures to tell, both of the general frontier life and of 
 his fighting under Jackson against the Creeks. The drug 
 shop must have been a dreary place when the meteoric father 
 returned to Florida and Jackson. 
 
 When his apprenticeship was up young Simms entered the 
 law office of Charles R. Carroll. The pleasant relations be 
 tween his father and himself suggest that the father may have 
 been contributing something to his support. The study of 
 medicine had been abandoned, if for no other reason, be 
 cause the fates so often decree that in America a great writer 
 must have first tried to be a lawyer. Simms filled out the 
 tradition completely by dividing his time between law-books 
 and verse-making. Probably not all his odes celebrated pub- 
 
134 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 lie men like Lafayette, for in a short time he was engaged to 
 be married to Miss Anna Malcolm Giles. 
 
 Studies and poetry and love-making were all interrupted 
 by a visit he paid his father near Georgeville, Mississippi, in 
 1824 or 1825. The journey was adventurous and his stay in 
 the border country must have been the realization of many 
 of his boyhood s day-dreams. He visited numerous settle 
 ments with his father, unconsciously storing up material for 
 his romances, and he wrote poems on Indian subjects in 
 spired by visits to the Creeks and Cherokees. Once in the 
 wilderness he found he had been resting by a grave, which 
 in spite of his father s skepticism he liked to think was the 
 burial place of some follower of De Soto. 
 
 This visit of several months was of great importance in the 
 young man s development. It was the first traveling he had 
 done, and it took him through varied and picturesque scenes 
 to a romantic world. But at the time he seems to have been 
 chiefly stirred by his father s suggestion, occasioned by the 
 visit, that he should remain in the Southwest. The elder 
 Simms had no happy memory of Charleston and he prophe 
 sied vehemently, after his fashion, that his son would not 
 succeed there. Perhaps the young man s admiration for his 
 father was tempered with some distrust of his judgment in 
 practical affairs, or he may have inherited the paternal de 
 termination ; in any case he decided to make his career in his 
 native city and accordingly returned. He never saw his 
 father again. In 1830 he probably visited Mississippi after 
 his father s death, on March 28th of that year. 
 
 II 
 
 The career that Simms began upon his return from visiting 
 his father was in some ways as sad as Poe s, though it was of 
 perfect honor. He lacked the social position necessary to 
 win a hearing in his aristocratic city; he was doomed always 
 

 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 135 
 
 to lack an appreciative audience in the South; and he came 
 so late in the troubled decades before the Civil War that 
 neither North nor South had much attention to spare for his 
 type of story. Cooper s fame was achieved in the most es 
 tablished parts of the country during the most peaceful years 
 between the Revolution and the Civil War; before Simms be 
 gan to write Cooper had preempted the audience that cared 
 for his kind of romance. Simms was evidently facing as 
 many difficulties as possible when he entered the same field 
 in troubled years and in a section of the South whose quietest/ 
 moments politically were but intervals in volcanic spasmsf 
 There was something immensely heroic in the vigor and as 
 tounding copiousness with which Simms dedicated his genius 
 to his own times and his own section writing to make a 
 place for himself in the South and especially in Charleston, 
 and writing equally to give the South the place in literary 
 esteem which he believed its ideals deserved. The motive of 
 patriotism was no more compelling in Brockden Brown or 
 Cooper than in Simms; he certainly paid a bitterer price for 
 his patriotism than any other American writer, wasting his 
 genius in limitless heart-breaking journalism, that the losing 
 cause might have a voice. 
 
 But of course he was untroubled by any glimpse of his fate 
 when in 1825 he returned to Charleston. In August died 
 General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, still remembered for 
 his reply to the French commissioners, "Millions for defence, 
 but not a cent for tribute." On September 14 the Charleston 
 Courier noticed a monody on the dead statesman. The poem 
 was anonymous and in spite of the friendly notice it achieved 
 an early and complete oblivion; no copy of it has been found. 
 It was Simms first noted appearance, though some of his 
 more youthful verses had filled space in the newspapers. Be 
 fore his visit to his father he had written a tragedy on Roder 
 ick, the last of the Goths, and he now offered it to a Charles- 
 
C 
 
 136 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 ton manager, who accepted it and would have produced 
 it, had not Simms withdrawn it as the result of some quarrel. 
 These initial disappointments were no more than young 
 writers by tradition are heir to, but in the case of Simms they 
 seem to be tragic omens. 
 
 In January, 1827, Simms published his Lyrical and Other 
 Poems, the first volume in which he formally laid claim to the 
 laurel. For thirty-five years he was to put forth books of 
 verse, convinced of his authentic election to Parnassus. Of 
 that conviction it is not necessary to speak here, beyond reg 
 istering sincere regret that verse and magazine writing kept 
 him so largely from training his story-telling genius. But 
 from his own point of view, no matter what posterity thinks 
 of it, Simms was justified in his verse-writing; nothing else 
 gave him, perhaps, a pleasure quite so keen. And any exer- 
 
 _ cise which fostered his idealism should be gratefully thought 
 of, for altogether too many incidents of his life were of a na- 
 
 _ture to darken his ideals, as writer and man. 
 
 Late in 1827 he published a second volume of verse, entitled 
 Early Lays, more interesting than the first because of certain 
 pieces based on the legends of his region material he was 
 later to use advantageously in prose. In September of the 
 following year he joined a fellow-poet named Simmons in 
 publishing and editing a magazine the first of his many ad 
 ventures of that sort called The Tablet, or Southern Monthly 
 Literary Gazette. Simms lifelong sacrifices to supply the 
 South with a magazine are pathetic. This first attempt, 
 after a few numbers, was a failure, and the two editors bore 
 the loss. Perhaps Simms gained something in local fame not 
 easily commensurable. On the Fourth of July, 1828, he had 
 delivered an oration before the Palmetto Society, at the cele 
 bration of the battle of Fort Moultrie; evidently he was to be 
 a marked man even in his unappreciative city. His biog 
 rapher makes the interesting suggestion that among his au- 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 137 
 
 dience at Fort Moultrie may have been Edgar Allan Poe, sta 
 tioned there at the time as E. A. Perry in Battery H, First 
 Artillery. 
 
 The largest part of his attention was given, while it lasted, 
 to his magazine. It is self-evident that his law studies were 
 well in the past. He had indeed been admitted to the bar on 
 April 17, 1827, had pleaded his first cases with much skill and 
 energy, and had made in the first year six hundred dollars 
 no bad beginning for that profession. But his heart was set 
 on literature, and in his optimistic temperament practical 
 considerations did not count. That he had reason enough to 
 be practical may be inferred from his marriage to Miss Giles 
 on October 19, 1826 six months before he had been ad 
 mitted to the bar. In November of 1827 was born a daughter, 
 Anna Augusta, the only child of this marriage. His wife ap 
 parently had no money, and how they managed to get on at 
 all is not clear. 
 
 Simms may have been living on the capital of a small legacy 
 from his mother. Upon the extinction of his magazine he in 
 vested the remnants of this little fortune in a daily paper, the 
 City Gazette, which in 1830 he began to publish, in partner 
 ship with E. S. Duryea, a printer. The editing of this paper 
 was destined to launch Simms into the political maelstrom of 
 those days, to lead him as far as possible from the literary 
 pursuits for which he had abandoned the law. As if to re 
 cover his balance, he published towards the end of 1829 a 
 volume of verse, Cortes, Cain, and Other Poems, in which ap 
 peared his best known poem, The Lost Pleiad; and in 1830 
 democracy had its say in The Tri-Color, or The Three Days 
 of Blood in Paris, a book of verse that had the luck to be re 
 printed in London before the year was out. 
 
 He was soon to have experience of mob democracy at home. 
 When he assumed control of the Gazette, South Carolina had 
 for some years been in the throes of the nullification move- 
 
138 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 ment the movement led by Calhoun, which strove to estab 
 lish the right of a state to reject or ignore any Federal legis 
 lation which it did not approve. The point of debate at the 
 time was the tariff, which almost caused South Carolina to 
 secede; but the real issue, as thoughtful men foresaw, was not 
 nullification but secession the question whether a state under 
 any circumstances had the right to leave the Union/. Simms 
 held consistently through his life that a state had no such 
 right except in the very last extremity a position which made 
 secession logical for him when slavery was at stake, but which 
 now held him as logically on the Union side. A matter of 
 tariff rates did not in his opinion justify nullification or seces 
 sion. On the Fourth of July, 1831, he read a National Ode 
 at a Union celebration, and his editorials were firmly against 
 the nullifiers. 
 
 At first he happened to be on the winning side in the local 
 elections, and in what is supposed to be the spirit of Southern 
 journalism he allowed to appear in his paper certain personal 
 attacks, which provided him with enemies against the day of 
 adversity. In 1831 the followers of Calhoun were victorious, 
 and celebrated with a torch-light procession which passed the 
 office of the Gazette. Simms was standing outside the door. 
 The crowd hissed him, and he retorted by calling them cow 
 ards, whereupon he almost lost his life. His unmoved courage 
 when the crowd made a rush at him, awed them or at least 
 gained their respect, and they were persuaded by cool-headed 
 leaders to march on. It was the most spectacular appearance 
 Simms ever made in his own city; the only profit of it, as of 
 most of his appearances there, was a very empty glory. His 
 paper immediately began to feel the effect of his unpopularity. 
 Subscriptions declined steadily until on June 7, 1832, he pub 
 lished a notice that the paper was now in the hands of Wil 
 liam Laurens Poole. Duryea had died in March. The notice 
 in the Gazette made it quite clear that Simms was a bankrupt. 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 139 
 
 He had suffered heavier losses. His first little home had 
 been burned down a foretaste of his final domestic tragedy. 
 His father had died in Mississippi; Mrs. Gates, his beloved 
 grandmother, had died soon after; and on February 20, 1832, 
 he buried his wife. A strong nature might well have been 
 crushed by this tragic sequence. That Simms bore his fate 
 and lived to know sufferings that make these seem light, is at 
 once a measure of the man and of his sorrows. His father s 
 doleful prophecy of a career in Charleston had come true. 
 Simms stirred himself to begin life afresh, and leaving his 
 daughter presumably with his wife s relations, he came 
 North. 
 
 Ill 
 
 How unfortunate Simms was in the particular time in 
 which he lived is illustrated by his attitude toward the North. 
 It was there that his genius was appreciated and his books 
 published; his literary career would probably have been im 
 possible, even in peace, without the support the North from 
 the first gave him. But his political sympathies his patriot 
 ism, as he would have said withheld him from the full en 
 joyment of what the North offered. Many years later, in a 
 book that is not without strong sectional prejudice/he writes 
 pleasantly of his first days with Bryant and the other apprecia 
 tive spirits who gave him welcome. "When I first visited 
 New York, Hoboken was as favorite a resort with me, of an 
 afternoon, as it was to thousands of your citizens. Its beau 
 tifully sloping lawns were green and shady. Now! Oh! the 
 sins of brick and mortar! There, I first knew Bryant and 
 Sands, and wandered with them along the shores, at sunset, 
 or strolled away, up the heights of Weehawken, declaiming 
 the graceful verses of Halleck upon the scene." The con 
 trast with the scenes he had left behind him in South Caro 
 lina speaks for itself, and one wishes his fate had here given 
 
140 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 him a period of high-minded leisure in which to concentrate 
 and organize his powers. 
 
 But his recent losses impelled him to an active life even in 
 those summer days that he remembered so pleasantly. On 
 Whis arrival from the South he had found the cholera raging in 
 , (/ New York, and for a time had stopped at Hingham, Massa 
 chusetts. In this village he had worked on his long poem 
 \Jb Atalantis, a Story oj the Sea, which was published in New 
 York a few months later, in 1832. When the cholera scare 
 was over, Simms met Bryant, as he says, and began a friend 
 ship that was ended only by his own death. Through this 
 fortunate introduction to literary New York he seems to have 
 met most of the interesting men, and he had an opportunity 
 to indulge his love of the theater. He heard Fanny Kemble 
 and met George Holland, and later became the intimate friend 
 of Edwin Forrest. 
 
 When his ambitious poem was safely through the press, 
 Simms returned to Charleston, much cheered by the visit. 
 But there was nothing for him to do in the South just then, 
 except to visit his little daughter and hear generous friends 
 praise his new poem; so in 1833 he was North once more, this 
 time settled in New Haven. He was ready for any profitable 
 
 literary enterprise, and finding among his papers a murder, 
 story which he had written for his Gazette, he elaborated it 
 into his first novel, Martin Faber. This book was put into 
 print by a New Haven publisher, but the Harpers accepted 
 it and put it on sale, and it had an immediate success. Much 
 of the author s satisfaction was spoiled by the charge that the 
 / book was imitated from an English novel, published at the 
 same time; and though the charge was easily answered, it in 
 duced in Simms a frame of mind that almost led to a duel with 
 a gentleman who had spoken slightingly of him. The only 
 completely satisfying result of the book was the money it 
 brought, and Simms was not the type of man to consider 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 141 
 
 4hat a substitute for the honor he desired to win by his pen. 
 \This first novel, however, is of little literary importance be 
 yond the fact that, as its sale proved, it was very readable. 
 So were all his stories. Here he was attempting simply a tale 
 of horror, common enough at the time, as the suspicion of 
 plagiarism showed ; and though he had a natural bent toward I 
 realistic horrors, he was never an artist in his management of t 
 such effects, least of all in his early attempts. Simms felt this 
 himself, and omitted Martin Faber from the revised editioi 
 of his works. 
 
 In the meanwhile he had been doing various kinds of mag 
 azine writing, some of it interesting, the rest of it mere hack 
 work. Several stories written in this way he now collected 
 into an unimportant volume published in Philadelphia, in 
 1833, under the title The Book oj My Lady : a Melange. In the 
 same year he found time to start a new magazine in Charles 
 ton at least he brought out one number of it. The wide ex 
 perience from publishing in so many cities perhaps encouraged 
 him to call this paper The Cosmopolitan. It failed at once. 
 
 In July, 1834, Simms published in New York his first no 
 table book, Guy Rivers. The reception of this story was the 
 most encouraging that the author had yet enjoyed. The 
 Northern critics fell completely under the charm of a new 
 scene and a new genius in the perennial romance of adven 
 ture. The book was published the next year in England. 
 One curious result of its popularity was an offer from a 
 Charleston merchant to send Simms to Europe an oppor 
 tunity for study which the author greatly desired but was too 
 proud to accept. 
 
 Guy Rivers belongs to the group of novels known as "border/ 
 romances." It is not perhaps the best of them; certainly ffis 
 not among the best of all Simms stories. Its merit is that it 
 begins the series of books that the author and his admirers 
 were glad to recognize as his; if Martin Faber may be passed 
 
142 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 over, ^Guy Rivers is the first of his stories. That it is a tale of 
 /adventure, with a Scott hero, normally stupid, and a villainous 
 / outlaw for the secondary, romantic hero, and with a correct 
 y heroine to console the proper youth at the end is sufficient 
 Characterization of it. But the scene is laid in the frontier 
 region Simms knew, and therefore the book was accepted by 
 his countrymen as a new discovery of the romance they had 
 overlooked, at their very doors. In this they were right; and 
 if Simms has grave faults of -structure and style, if he indulges 
 at times in a species of the romantic that almost spells itself 
 claptrap, he is still entitled to remembrance as a 
 
 coverer, in less degree but no other kind than Cooper and 
 Scott. His hero and his heroine were the pattern of youth in 
 \ his own state, as they appeared to his romancing ideal. The 
 scenes in Georgia which he clothed with these adventures were 
 easily recognizable, and doubtless he had some thought that 
 they would hold the tradition of his story, as the Scotch land 
 scape holds the Waverley novels, or Sleepy Hollow, the ride of 
 Ichabod Crane. That Simms failed in any such permanent re 
 sults is explained by those faults of writing which mar this and 
 all of his books, and which can be studied to greater advan 
 tage in his next novel, his masterpiece. 
 . Immediately after the success of Guy Rivers Simms began 
 The Yemassee, and in a year it was published in New York. 
 Its success was complete. The same showers of praise fell 
 upon it that had greeted Guy Rivers, but the critics were 
 learning wisdom and their judgment of this story was dis 
 cerning. No other story of the author s is now so much read, 
 and common opinion holds that none other is so good. If it 
 were worth while to attempt to disturb the tradition which is 
 kindest to Simms fame, one might challenge this opinion in 
 favor of some of his shorter, livelier tales; but it is fairer to 
 examine the book as it stands, with the author s genius and 
 limitations written large in it. 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 143 
 
 Perhaps the legends that Mrs. Gates used to tell her grand 
 son now proved his inspiration, or his knowledge of the Ye- 
 massees may have been gained from his wide reading in the 
 history of his state. In 1715, when Charles Craven was gov 
 ernor of Carolina, the Indians planned a wholesale insurrec 
 tion against the settlers. They were partly incited by the 
 Spanish in Florida, and partly by their own fears, as we are 
 told in the story, that the white men would possess their lands 
 and drive them into the swamps. Their rising was terribly 
 successful on the borders, but when they advanced towards 
 Charleston they were met and totally defeated by the governor 
 and his army of twelve hundred. The Indians were dispersed 
 and took refuge in Florida. 
 
 These facts Simms used as the basis of his story, and Gov 
 ernor Craven, masquerading gratuitously as Gabriel Harri 
 son, is his hero. The Indians he drew from observations 
 made among the Creeks and Cherokees, while he was visiting 
 his father. The scenery in the book was that of his native 
 state, described as carefully as though he had been writing 
 history; the rivers and places were accurately named, so that 
 the natural illustration for the volume is a map. Only such 
 episodes as the defense of the blockhouse were complete ro 
 mancing. In short, he set out to write an historical novel, 
 which by virtue of the quality of his genius became a tale of 
 adventure. 
 
 It is the solid intention of the story which has made it per- /. 
 manent. History was not the author s end in the border ro 
 mances, and without an organized ground-plan of fact, his 
 too facile incidents resulted always in chaos. But in this book 
 he seems to have denied himself many a thrilling episode, and 
 it is our business to be grateful; as it is, the story contains 
 enough adventure to furnish an artist like Cooper with sev 
 eral plots. Simms also appears to have turned resolutely 
 away from the Cooperesque portrayal of the Indian, probably 
 
LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 because he could not have reproduced that aspect of savage 
 life from observation; for this reason The Yemassee is pe 
 culiar among Indian stories for the infinitesimal amount of 
 "woodcraft" it contains. \ The Last of The Mohicans, pub 
 lished nine years before, had set the tradition of Indian craft 
 which still has authority with us, though later frontiersmen 
 would call Cooper to account for excessive romance; yet 
 Simms gives his red men superior acuteness in only one place, 
 and there Sanutee s keen hearing is compared with nothing 
 sharper than Richard Chorley s common shrewdness. The 
 savages are susceptible to panic, as white men might be; 
 Harrison and his dog put one section of the Jndians to 
 rout before the blockhouse. Nor are they of superhuman 
 strength otherwise Chorley would not have had Sanutee at 
 his mercy. 
 
 Yet the true romance of the story is in the Indian part of it. 
 More heroic, certainly, are Cooper s red men than Sanutee and 
 his tribe, but Simms endows his warriors with a natural hu 
 manity that has its own charm. Sanutee, the last of a proud 
 race, his wife Matiwan and his son Occonestoga, call to mind 
 at once-^and the comparison is illuminating that other In 
 dian family, Chingachgook, Hist and Uncas. The early 
 death of Hist and the tragic killing of Uncas save those two 
 most poetic characters for a kind of immortal youth. It was 
 the poet in Cooper that thus visualized the extinction of the 
 Indian race. To depict Chingachgook as the drunkard in 
 The Pioneers was also a poet s work, recognizing an ugly 
 truth with the greatest economy of ugliness. If any of the 
 three must be degraded, Chingachgook could best be spared. 
 Imagine the horror of besotting Hist or Uncas with whisky 
 from the settlements! Yet Simms is fully aware that when the 
 savage encounters civilization, it is his son who is lowered by 
 the contact, since the younger nature is less fixed and more 
 easily lured. The commonest tragedy for the Indians must 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 145 
 
 have been always, as it is now in the reservations, the fading of 
 the race s ideals in their young men. / Qccpnestpga, in the 
 story, is the only son of the great chief. He has his father s 
 prowess and all the fineness of his noble descent; he is tender :. 
 as well as brave, and his devotion to his mother, Matiwan, 
 lights his character even at its worst; his friendship for the 
 English also indicates his quick-witted appreciation of the 
 civilization that fascinates him. But he is enslaved to drink, 
 and every fine inherited trait, every purpose of his own, 
 wastes in him like water poured upon the sands. The truth 
 of the picture is at once made darker and brighter, so to speak, 
 by the fact that Occonestoga is powerless to resist his beset 
 ting vice; he thereby loses in respect, but gains much in pity, 
 and his mother s love for him is more touching. 
 
 Something is gained further for the reality of Sanutee s 
 character by making him an exceptional figure among his 
 people; he is unable to persuade the other chiefs not to sell 
 their lands to the English. Perhaps it is more romantic to 
 think of the Indian as making forlorn stands against encroach 
 ing civilization, driven to the wall against his will; but it is 
 probably truer to show such a race as Simms does, inclined 
 to accept the worst side of civilization first, selling the graves 
 of their fathers, as Sanutee says, for gold and whisky. That 
 a fine minority, a romantic aristocracy should survive, is 
 easier to believe than that all should be heroes; and therefore 
 Sanutee in his companionless nobility is a convincing good 
 Indian. 
 
 In one sad respect Simms is but too probably a follower of 
 Cooper; he trjes to be humorous. It might seem in general 
 hard to establish any literary imitation by so common a 
 phenomenon, but the reader who knows Cooper s peculiar 
 attempts at sprightly witticism or humor of character can 
 never be in doubt when he tastes that fare again. Simms even 
 takes over Cooper s stock comic character, the pedantic bore, 
 
146 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 who monopolizes the talk with set speeches on his one topic. 
 In The Yemassee Dr. Constantine Maximilian Nichols, who 
 parades his patriotism at every turn, asserts his readiness to 
 die for his country, yet is always safely in the background, is 
 the very worst type of the Cooper bore. Both Cooper and 
 Simms were too serious and in a way too elaborate to be 
 masters of the lighter shades of character drawing. Simms 
 here suffers also from a faulty sense of structure, which allows 
 him to add an irrelevant personage simply for the purposes 
 of his supposed humor; Dr. Nichols is in no way necessary to 
 the plot, nor does he really enter it. 
 
 Like Scott and Cooper Simms makes a contrast to his ro 
 mance by occasional scenes of horror horror in all these 
 /stories being the one legacy from the Gothic school. The 
 scenes of horror in The Yemassee are among the best that 
 Simms pictured, because they are not too grimly realistic, and 
 they have a certain right to the room they take. (The best of 
 them is the great scene of the book, in which Matiwan kills 
 her son to save him from disgrace. Second in importance 
 artistically, though better known, is the description of Bess 
 Matthews encounter with the rattlesnake. Finely wrought 
 as this scene is, it is cheap artistically because it is unprepared 
 for and has no consequences. Some credit is due to the au 
 thor for refraining in one place from the sort of crude, even 
 revolting horror he too often indulges in; when the Indians 
 are swimming after Harrison s canoe and are themselves pur 
 sued by alligators, the reader with any experience of Simms 
 , habit nerves himself for a bit of gruesome tragedy; but Harri 
 son escapes the Indians, the Indians escape the alligators, 
 and the reader also is spared. 
 
 The easy solution of this scene is typical of a certain fault 
 
 in this novel, which can be said to mar most of Simms work. 
 
 ^jH^His imagination is extraordinarily fertile in incident, so much 
 
 so that he has not time in any book to develop the situations 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 147 
 
 that fill the story to overflowing. Rapidity is well enough in 
 plot, but sequence counts for something too, and it is a sort of 
 disappointment to any but a boyish reader to find the hero, 
 even in a book of melodramatic adventure, plunged into a new 
 dilemma in the beginning of every chapter, and lifted into 
 safety bodily in the last line.,, The rescuing angel is over 
 worked and sometimes not sufficiently agile. When somebody 
 has somebody else by the throat and the victim already sees the 
 knife or the tomahawk starting on its almost instantaneous de 
 scent, the reader learns to know that either a shot will ring out 
 from the forest and the fierce eyes of the murderer will be ob 
 served to lose their fierceness in the glaze of death, or somehow 
 that knife will obligingly delay its stroke till a figure leaps upon 
 the murderer s back and chokes him off. The rattlesnake 
 charms Bess, and Occonestoga happens along at the last 
 moment and transfixes the reptile with his arrow. Harrison s 
 negro attendant is captured and taken to the Spanish ship, 
 but Harrison immediately captures the Spanish captain and 
 trades him off for the slave. Harrison is fettered in the In 
 dian lodge, but Matiwan simply walks in, holds an animated 
 conversation, unbinds him and goes out with him both 
 stepping carefully over the sleepy figures of the Indians on 
 guard. The reader is surprised that those Indians wake at 
 all, even when Harrison steps on one of them. 
 
 But the worst illustration of this too facile solving of dan 
 gerous situations is the whole episode of the fight around the 
 blockhouse the part of the story which is usually counted, 
 along with the rattlesnake scene, as most effective. Certainly 
 the fight is described vividly, and the sally of the smith gives 
 a true thrill, but when the Indians set fire to the blockhouse 
 and there is no apparent escape for the white people, how does 
 the author save them? He has neither the patience nor the 
 ingenuity of Cooper in a similar predicament, to let his garri 
 son wait in the bottom of a dry well until the house is burned 
 
148 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 over their heads and the foe have retreated. He simply tells 
 us that the Indians at this moment were obliged to go some 
 where else to fight another foe, and the garrison, much re 
 lieved, opened the door and walked out. 
 
 Simms is too good a story-teller, however, to seem ridicu 
 lous even in these solutions while his book is in our hands. 
 The very rapidity of the incidents leaves no opportunity for 
 too minute examination at the time. It is only when the book 
 
 I is closed that we reflect soberly on the_waste_of undeveloped, 
 undisciplined material. And one episode, which has been 
 justly said to be the great moment of the story, is a shining 
 exception to all this criticism. / The chapter in which Matiwan 
 brains her own child with herHomahawk so that his soul will 
 not be lost is in every way greatly told, though other less ad 
 mirable sections of the story are better known.; What gives 
 the episode its quality is that the problem is carried through, 
 for once, to a logical conclusion. The reader hardly expects 
 Occonestoga to be executed, or excommunicated from his 
 tribe; the previous experience of the book suggests that some 
 escape will open to him. When his mother kills him the solu 
 tion is felt at once to be both logical and true, since it is the one 
 thing she would do, and the paradox of such a deed as the 
 work of sublime love lifts the episode into something higher 
 than mere adventure. 
 
 The faults that have been suggested in The Yemassee may 
 appear to sum up into a severe charge, but they indicate the 
 condition of Simms genius rather than the worth of the book. 
 Simms was a prodigious worker, reckoning by the volume 
 of his work. He was not a careful writer, nor did he ever 
 listen to criticism. He lacked the artist s conscience and per 
 severance; he might have been richer in such polishing virtues, 
 had he been poorer in ideas and themes. But a story may be 
 out at elbows so far as art is concerned, and still be memor 
 able, as some of Brockden Brown s work would indicate. 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 149 
 
 And The Yemassee is a fine story, true in scene and character, 
 rich in incident, and filled with noble conduct such as we ask 
 of romance. 
 
 IV 
 
 After The Yemassee appeared Simms went on immediately 
 to other work which, if not quite so good, is at least among 
 his best. In August, 1835, a new romance from his pen was 
 advertised, and at the end of the year The Partisan: a Tale oj 
 the Revolution was published in New York. A legend at 
 taches to the composition of this story, almost too fabulous 
 for belief, but showing the conception Simms contemporaries 
 had of his working methods. His biographer tells the inci 
 dent, as recounted by James Harper. Simms came North 
 with the manuscript half finished, and all he had written was 
 soon in type. He was going out of town for a few days, when 
 Mr. Harper objected that the printers had nothing to work on 
 in that period. Simms asked for pen and paper and a quiet 
 room, and in half an hour produced enough copy to keep the 
 type-setters busy till he returned. With proper allowances 
 this tradition probably does justice to the speed of the South 
 erner s pen, and explains numerous defects in his art. On the 
 whole the incident, if it were quite true, would be no more re 
 markable than Cooper s writing and paging the last chapter 
 of The Spy before he knew how the plot was to end. 
 
 In 1836 appeared Mellichampe: a legend of the Santee. 
 Fifteen years later Simms published Katharine Walton, or The 
 Rebel oj Dorchester, but in spite of the interval these two books 
 were intended to form a sort of trilogy with The Partisan, and 
 it is convenient to consider them together. The third is the 
 true sequel of the first; Mellichampe has little in common with 
 either. But Simms was not too conscientious about his own 
 plots, and the series, no matter how loosely bound, repre 
 sents a solid kind of romancing. The scene is laid around 
 
150 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Dorchester, where Simms had delighted as a boy to trace the 
 movements of Marion s men, or to hear an old inhabitant tell 
 some of the local legends. His material was therefore well in 
 hand, and his historical conscience was roused; in most of 
 these patriotic romances a desire to be accurate in his facts 
 and his geography was his best substitute for artistic disci 
 pline. 
 
 There is much in these stories to remind one of Cooper s 
 Spy. The historical atmosphere, the shifting movements of 
 the troopers, the daring bands of partisans, at first seem much 
 alike in both. A close comparison, however, brings out 
 Cooper s art a quality too often denied him, and emphasizes 
 also the larger scene, the more humorous and spectacular 
 events that distinguish Simms work. Simms had more his 
 tory at his command than Cooper had. It is not simply that 
 he writes three long volumes to Cooper s one, but he has an 
 old and interesting society to reproduce, independently of the 
 battle scenes and war motives, and the period the three stories 
 cover includes important fights, whereas The Spy depicts only 
 skirmishes. Simms has no central historical figure like Wash 
 ington; on the other hand, the minor characters in his cycle 
 were drawn from life, as far as he could get at it from Charles 
 ton records and legends. One family in particular, the Wai- 
 tons, are the center of the series, taking the place of an indi 
 vidual hero. 
 
 The Partisan illustrates the great attention its author was 
 giving to the historical basis of his story; in several places the 
 romance passes from fiction to a bare historical record. Its 
 astonishing virtue is the great spirit with which the adventu 
 rous moments are recounted. Singleton, the hero, who at 
 the end of the series marries Katharine Walton, is somewhat 
 too heroic to be interesting as a character, and Colonel Wal 
 ton is at best a substantial lay-figure. But Singleton s ad 
 ventures, especially his daring rescue of Walton at the close 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 151 
 
 of the first novel, are self-sufficient even without character 
 analysis. Colonel Walton, too, is made interesting by the 
 danger he undergoes. His escape from hanging makes him 
 in a way the hero of the last novel in the series, for the for 
 tunes of the other characters depend upon his, and he chal 
 lenges attention actively as a leader of the partisan troop. 
 
 Yet it must be confessed frankly that Simms is no master of 
 portraiture; still less does he depict character. The women 
 who appear in these and other stories are generally paler to 
 the imagination than Cooper s worst and nothing harsher 
 need be said. Like Cooper, Simms delights in a formal 
 pattern of social behavior, which when garbed in a blue gown 
 or a red, is intended to become to the reader s imagination 
 a personality, distinct from another pattern in white. It is 
 chiefly by their geographical location and their external ap 
 pearance that the female characters are told one from the 
 other; and as Simms is generally careless in the external de 
 scription, often they cannot be told apart at all. Perhaps if 
 any woman in the three novels would be recognizable when 
 met in real life, it would be Moll Harvey, Katharine Walton s 
 rival, yet it is only by careful inference that the reader is able 
 to detect the color of her eyes and hair. He is discouraged in 
 the effort by this sort of dithyramb, serviceable, if ever, only 
 to keep the Harpers type-setter busy: "Moll Harvey was of 
 middle size and most symmetrical figure. Ease and grace 
 were natural to her as life itself; but her motion was not simply 
 that of ease and grace. There was a free, joyous impulse in 
 her movements, an exquisite elasticity, which displayed itself 
 in a thousand caprices of gesture, and seemed to carry her 
 forward buoyantly as a thing possessing the infinite support 
 and treasure of the air. As song to ordinary speech, such was 
 the relation which her action bore to the common movements 
 of her sex. A fairy property in her nature seemed to bring 
 with her the spring and all its flowers where she came; and 
 
: 
 
 152 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the loveliness which appeared to ray out from her person, as 
 she walked or danced, compelled the involuntary homage of 
 the eye, making the thought forgetful of all search or inquiry 
 except through that single medium." 
 
 In some of these books the conversation occasionally spar 
 kles, to the great encouragement of the reader. But these 
 bright spots are due to the insertion of clever bits of repartee 
 current in Charleston tradition. They rarely come very nat 
 urally from the lips into which Simms inserts them, and the 
 author makes the illusion more difficult by stating in a scru 
 pulous foot-note where the witticism was first uttered. Of 
 course it is useless to take a romancer to task for his dialogue, 
 if his genius is solely in adventure; but Simms hasty methods 
 of writing cannot be defended, and to them largely may be 
 laid his failure to cover his tracks or build up his characters. 
 What he lost by not revising his work may be illustrated 
 again from Moll Harvey. When she has cheated Balfour of 
 his hope to win Katharine Walton, it apparently occurs to 
 Simms that a girl would need a strong motive to become the 
 murderess of Colonel Walton; the love story as told so far does 
 not justify her. Simms therefore hints that Moll Harvey had 
 been Balfour s mistress. " There was a story and relations 
 between them," he says, "of which we nave not heard." It 
 is a pity we have not heard; for if she had lived through a 
 tragic past her mad jealousy would have been interesting, 
 not wooden from the start, and Balfour s devilish character 
 would have seemed less a thing of merely theatrical terror. 
 
 Two characters only remain notable, from the three novels 
 Lieutenant Porgy, whose career continued through the Rev 
 olutionary romances, and Whitherspoon, the faithful scout in 
 Mellichampe. To describe chivalry, personal loyalty and in 
 tegrity, comes easy to a man like Simms the danger usually 
 being that such a character lends itself to maudlin exagger 
 ation. In Whitherspoon Simms manages to keep within ar- 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 153 
 
 tistic bounds, and the scout is easily thought of with Cooper s 
 men. iPorgy has been called a prose FalstafF; his rotundity, 
 his boastfulness, and his general fatness physical and mental, 
 encourage the notion. But it seems the author meant him as 
 a burlesque of himself in certain moods. The likeness is not 
 now recognizable. Porgy s boastfulness and his love of good 
 eating might well be set up as claims to further kinship with 
 Parolles and Friar Tuck; in the method by which his humor 
 is developed monologue assisted by timely questions he 
 might derive from, or anticipate, negro minstrelsy. 
 
 " Here I am at home, he says. The Santee did well 
 enough; but there s a sweetness, a softness, a plumpness, a 
 beauty about bird and beast along the Ashley, that you find 
 in the same animals nowhere else. God bless my mother ! 
 
 " For what in particular, Lieutenant? 
 
 " That she chose it for my birthplace. I shouldn t have 
 been half the man I am born anywhere else; shouldn t have 
 had such discriminating tastes, such a fine appetite, such a 
 sense of the beautiful in nature. 
 
 Simms feeling for history was at its strongest in Katharine 
 Walton, which explains why that story is somewhat less in 
 teresting than The Partisan. From the earlier book the in- - A * 
 cidents of the light-korse bands are continued, and Marion s 
 men, breaking cover at unexpected places, give the story its 
 movement and charm. But undoubtedly Simms in this 
 volume cared more about the portraits of Charleston society, 
 the traditions he had heard all his life in his native city. If 
 Charleston at the end of the eighteenth century had been as 
 rich in notable people as London, Simms might have given 
 us as important a gallery as we view in Henry Esmond or The 
 Virginians; but alas for local pride! None of the portraits 
 he labored at bear remembered names; only a passing refer 
 ence to the home of Cotesworth Pinckney stirs the reader 
 with a little thrill of recognition. Simms own account of the 
 
154 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 book on the whole is just, and we may well leave it with his 
 comment: "a large proportion of the work, and much of the 
 interest, will be found to consist in the delineation of the 
 social world of Charleston, during the Revolutionary period. 
 These delineations are so many different studies, pursued 
 during a series of many years, and under the guidance of the 
 most various and the best authorities. The matter, in fact, 
 is mostly historical, even when merely social. The portraits 
 are mostly of real persons. The descriptions of life, manners, 
 customs, movements, the social aspects in general, have all 
 been drawn from sources as unquestionable as abundant. 
 The social reunions, in many instances, as described in the 
 story, were real occurrences. The anecdotes, the very rep 
 artees, though never before in print, are gathered from tradi 
 tion and authority." A story so pieced together may fail of 
 the highest success in romance, but the method was not a 
 lazy one; the reader thinks kindly of Katharine Walton, as an 
 honorable document in its author s character. 
 
 V.{ 
 
 Immediately after the publication of Mellichampe Simms 
 married his second wife, Miss Chevillette Roach, of Barn- 
 well, South Carolina. Miss Roach lived with her father, Mr. 
 Nash Roach, at Woodlands, their plantation, which soon be 
 came known as the home of the novelist. Even before the 
 estate came into his control through the death of his father- 
 in-law, in 1858, Simms was to all purposes owner of Wood 
 lands and dispenser of its hospitalities. Mr. Roach was a 
 chronic sufferer from the gout; perhaps he had brought with 
 him from England those pleasant eighteenth-century habits 
 of conviviality that are supposed to usher in gouty old age. 
 It is certain that his son-in-law fell in naturally with any such 
 household customs, and under his regime the entertaining at 
 Woodlands became famous. Bryant and other Northern 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 155 
 
 friends came here and felt the charm of the place; Simms 
 Southern friends of course visited him more often. The 
 summers he spent at Charleston or in the North, but in the 
 cool months he was busy writing in the fine library at Wood 
 lands, or managing the estate, no light task. 
 
 These were the happiest years Simms was to know. His 
 wife seems to have been a woman of character and charm; 
 his own fortunes were fairly established, his reputation gave 
 him an honored position, and the dignified plantation home 
 afforded all the leisure and luxury a writer needed. It is clear 
 he made good use of his prosperity. Although his hospitali 
 ties consumed much time, he held himself rigorously to a 
 large amount of literary work every day, none but a genius 
 of his perseverance could have accomplished so much. In 
 these years his resemblance to Scott appeared in many ways 
 in the variety of his human interests, in his industry, and in 
 his turn for medieval hospitality. His social gifts were great; 
 in contrast with Cooper, he maintained all his life that high 
 standard of lovable charm that is proverbial of the Southern 
 gentleman. Vehement as his opinions were, he lacked no 
 charity towards other men, and his trying losses never em 
 bittered him. If he failed of the highest accomplishment in 
 literature, at least his life is something for Americans to be 
 proud of, for no other of our great writers of fiction save Ir 
 ving was so lovable and so gifted among his fellow-men. 
 
 He was a voluble talker on all subjects, on some of which 
 his discourse must have been thin, yet from all accounts very 
 interesting. If he monopolized the conversation, making 
 himself the arbiter of every question and winning among his 
 friends a certain comparison to Dr. Johnson, perhaps it was 
 the Celt in him more than the Southerner; his father be 
 queathed him that vehemence, and enriched his talk also with 
 a kind of wit, a turn for epigrams and little verses. One sus 
 pects that the scenes in Charleston ball-rooms, in Katharine 
 

 156 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Walton, may be reliable clues to the sort of conversation 
 Simms was master of a trifle elaborate and premeditated 
 here and there, but intellectually alert. 
 
 It is easy to recall him as he appeared then strongly built, 
 inclined to stoutness, of a noble bearing. His face was not a 
 literary one; the keen eye and the firm set of the mouth sug 
 gests the man of action. But something intellectual, if mas 
 sive, is read in the high forehead and in the total expression 
 of the features. Looking on his portrait, one is aware of 
 largeness and heroism. 
 
 Altogether Simms at Woodland must have represented a 
 fine type of the Southerner before the war, a slaveholder, 
 treating his slaves with thoughtful affection, himself enjoying 
 the leisure and culture of an old world aristocrat. There is 
 something curious in the fate that made him thus typical; un 
 doubtedly he would have espoused the Southern cause with 
 the same conviction and ardor even if he had not been in 
 
 \ position to know from experience the best arguments for its 
 V social system; but being the man he was, in the position he 
 
 v had come to occupy, he became a sort of exponent of his 
 people, justifying their cause if that had been possible, and 
 suffering the full weight of their tragedy. No Southerner was 
 probably ever more thoroughly convinced than he of the 
 righteousness of slavery, and in equal measure, of the mas 
 ter s duty to the slave. The sixty or seventy negroes on his 
 place found in him their best friend. He would send a slave 
 to Charleston to consult a physician, paying the man s ex 
 penses as well as giving him this practical liberty. Each 
 slave family was permitted to raise chickens and vegetables, 
 which Simms bought from them thus recognizing their 
 right to the profit of their labor. He was considered, by those 
 who saw no other side to the question, to be an argument for 
 the beneficence of slavery as an institution, and he himself, 
 like many Southerners of refinement and goodness, appar- 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 157 
 
 ently believed that all other slaveholders were equally philan- 
 thropical. 
 
 For a while the problem did not bother him greatly; he was 
 busy and happy with his writing. That Katharine Walton 
 did not immediately follow Mellichampe must be explained 
 by the officious criticism of some friends, who persuaded him 
 that his native state was not the rich soil needed for produc 
 ing romantic plots. He listened to their argument, laid aside 
 the last member of his trilogy, and wrote Pelayo; a Story of 
 the Goth, which was something of a failure, though in 1838, 
 the year of its appearance, its author s prestige would carry 
 for at least a respectable distance anything he wrote, He 
 knew his mistake, and in the introduction to Katharine Wal- : 
 ton he speaks with some pride of the possibilities in South 
 Carolina s history for an indefinite number of romances, An 
 interesting suggestion has been made that perhaps he tried 
 to write romances on foreign subjects just because his greater 
 rival Cooper had failed in the attempt. That may well be 
 so; but if it be, Simms deserved failure for transgressing his 
 own principles. He always knew the advantage to be got 
 from developing native material. Cooper in his excursions 
 had a clear conscience, because it was necessary to depict 
 foreign scenes in order to illustrate his thesis the superiority 
 of democratic over feudal institutions. But one may easily 
 become too subtle over such points; a good story carries with 
 it its own ethics, a poor story has none. Pelayo and its se 
 quel seven years later, Count Julian, or The Last Days oj 
 The Goth, are forgotten books, whereas The Bravo and The 
 Headsman still have admiring readers. 
 
 In this year, 1838, Simms collected some short tales, his 
 faith in which has not been justified Carl Werner; an Imag 
 inative Story; with other Tales oj Imagination. This collec 
 tion with the novel called The Damsel of Darien, may be 
 passed over charitably, as examples of their author s worst. 
 
158 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 It is not to be expected that a man of his temperament, com 
 mitted to hasty methods of writing, should have a critical 
 knowledge of himself; Simms loved all the children of his pen 
 without distinction, and was happy in editing and republish- 
 ing several volumes that should have not been printed a first 
 time. 
 
 No strong suspicion of the general poorness of his work in 
 these two or three years troubled him, but. he got as near to the 
 truth as to wonder whether his books were not selling on the 
 strength of his name. Accordingly he published anonymously 
 Richard Hurdis, or The Avenger oj Blood, in 1838. In this 
 story he reverted to the type of border romance in which he 
 had first won his public; it was his natural material. But he 
 did not learn much from the experiment; when this anony 
 mous book succeeded he seems to have proved to himself 
 that all his other writings had succeeded on their merits. He 
 continued to work this old vein in a sequel, Border Beagles; a 
 Tale of Mississippi, 1840, and in Beauchampe, or the Ken 
 tucky Tragedy, 1842. 
 
 The first and the second of these stories are tales of des 
 perate adventure, founded on the exploits of the Murrell gang 
 of robbers in the Southwest. The facts for these tales Simms 
 got personally from Virgil A. Stewart, who had captured 
 Murrell, and from Stewart s own account of his experiences. 
 The books are purely sensational; they deal with criminal 
 rather than patriotic warfare and accordingly are reduced to 
 the level of the dime novel, but they are well told so far as the 
 interest is concerned. Beauchampe is of another type; one 
 \vonders how Simms could bring himself to write it. The plot 
 is a careful narrative of a murder case that attracted atten 
 tion in Kentucky in 1828. One Kentucky Colonel discovered 
 that his wife before her marriage had been seduced by an 
 other Kentucky Colonel, and the enraged husband promptly 
 killed the villain. For this murder he was executed, after he 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 159 
 
 and his wife had attempted suicide. Dealing with this sensa 
 tion of the moment, the novel had a large sale in Kentucky. 
 Fourteen years later Simms returned to the subject in Charle- 
 mont, or The Pride of The Village, which also had a large sale 
 in the district of the murder. Much as one must deplore the 
 bad taste that permitted Simms to dabble in such a wretched 
 mire, one must admit his sincerity; he apparently thought, 
 after faulty standards not uncommon in his time, that he was 
 serving the cause of domestic virtue by advertising this sorry 
 tragedy, and from his contemporaries he received praise for 
 consigning "the seducer and slanderer of female innocence" 
 to that "immortality of infamy which he so richly de 
 served." 
 
 It must be confessed that happy as his home life was in 
 these years, and industrious as he was, Simms was turning 
 out little that deserves permanent record. Almost all that he 
 wrote then has been totally forgotten; the only purpose in 
 mentioning it here is to give a just picture of his application 
 and perseverance. Two novels were produced in 1841, 
 neither of which was worthy of its author. The Kinsmen, or 
 the Black Riders oj The Congaree, now known as The Scout, 
 is a tale of two half-brothers on opposite sides in the Revolu 
 tionary struggles in South Carolina. The story adds nothing 
 to the pictures Simms had drawn in The Partisan and Melli- 
 champe, though the character of the scout, John Bannister, 
 is fine. For the most part the sensationalism hi which his pen 
 had recently dipped gave the tale an ignoble cast. The second 
 novel of the year, Confession; or The Blind Heart, is com 
 pounded of the sediment of the Kentucky tragedy plus some 
 bad Shaksperian criticism. Convinced that Othello was not 
 jealous, and that there was room in literature for a truly jeal 
 ous Othello, he worked out his theory relentlessly in an un 
 lovely story. 
 
 From 1842 to 1850 Simms wrote no memorable book. His 
 
160 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 pen was perhaps busier than ever, but the clouds of the com 
 ing war were gathering and he had other work in hand than 
 romance. Though he had taken the Union side in the nullifi 
 cation days, he was altogether a states rights man in the ques 
 tion of slavery, and he threw Himself vehemently into the 
 great quarrel. In his latest novels where he allowed his 
 characters at times to speak his views as to the future of the 
 United States, it is made clear that he expected and welcomed 
 a separation of North and South. To a Northerner it often 
 seems that every Southerner had a different reason for seced 
 ing, and some notable leaders, like Lee, are figures of sorrow 
 ful doom because they fought with regret, and from complex 
 motives. Simms is not at all of this class. Whatever the 
 great Virginians might find in the issue, of inevitable loyalty 
 to their state or defense of their invaded homes, Simms was 
 an aggressive advocate of slavery, and saw in that institution 
 the one cause and justification of the coming war. He is 
 therefore typical of the Northerner s notion of the Southerner; 
 what he stood for was what Mrs. Stowe attacked in her por 
 trait of Uncle Tom s first master and Eva s father. 
 
 To lend his pen to the cause, Simms turned from his fiction 
 to magazine work, editing for a while the Southron, the South 
 ern Quarterly Review, a small Georgia magazine called Orion, 
 and a formidably named venture of his own, the Southern and 
 Western Monthly Magazine and Review, usually spoken of 
 as Simms Magazine. Like other publications of the kind in 
 the South, these magazines found in their sprouting a mere 
 point of departure from which to decay. Simms understood 
 their doom better than most Southerners, but he was satis 
 fied with the dozen or less expiring numbers of each that 
 gave him an opportunity to speak out. For example, he would 
 print this challenge to the abolitionists: "We beg, once for 
 all, to say to our Northern readers, writers and publishers, 
 that, in the South, we hold slavery to be an especially and 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 161 
 
 wisely devised institution of heaven; devised for the benefit, 
 the improvement, and safety, morally, socially, and phys 
 ically, of a barbarous and inferior race, who would otherwise 
 perish by famine or by filth, by the sword, by disease, by 
 waste, and destinies forever gnawing, consuming, and finally 
 destroying." 
 
 These vague horrors of the negro s threatening fate suggest 
 the stump orator s rhetoric, but Simms could state the issue 
 simply enough. At a later time he writes: "If it be admitted 
 that the institution of slavery is a wrong done to the negro, the 
 question is at an end. No people can be justified for continu 
 ance in error and injustice. Once admit that there is a wrong 
 and a crime, and it must be followed by expiation and atone 
 ment. In the South we think otherwise. We hold the African 
 under moral and just titles, founded upon his characteristics, 
 his nature, his necessities and our own ; and our accountability 
 is to the God of both races. We, alone, are in possession of 
 the facts of the case, and our consciences are in no way 
 troubled in relation to our rights to hold the negro in bondage. 
 Perhaps our consciences are a thought too easy; but we be 
 lieve ourselves quite equal to the argument whenever we ap 
 pear before the proper tribunal. But we are a people, a na 
 tion, with arms in our hands, and in sufficient numbers to 
 compel the respect of other nations; and we shall never sub 
 mit the case to the judgment of another people, until they 
 show themselves of a superior virtue and intellect." 
 
 Here was plain talk, but be it said to Simms credit, it was 
 probably more enlightened and more diplomatic than any 
 thing he heard from his associates. There was nothing frigid 
 just then in South Carolinian speech. What Simms did not 
 say in print he could say in his public orations, of which he 
 delivered a good many, and from 1844 to 1846 he represented 
 his county in the state legislature. His success as the cham 
 pion of the ideas of his section got him finally the nomination 
 
1 62 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 for lieutenant-governor of South Carolina, in 1846, but he 
 lost the election by one vote. 
 
 His journalistic work had led him into some pleasant by 
 paths. He took to writing criticism, partly because he wanted 
 to, and partly because his magazines needed filling. His best 
 work in that direction is collected in the volume called Views 
 and Reviews in American Literature, History, and Fiction, 
 1846, a volume made notable by the admirable essay on 
 Cooper. More scholarly in intention, but less happy, was the 
 Supplement to the Plays o) William Shakspeare, 1848, an 
 edition of seven apocryphal plays, which exposed but too 
 plainly the inadequate training of the editor. More satisfac 
 tory were the biographies of some of his favorite heroes, 
 Marion, 1844; Captain John Smith, 1846; the Chevalier 
 Bayard, 1848; and General Greene, 1849 this last a work 
 which he pretended only to edit, but which is probably his 
 own. The four lives do credit to the author s heart; they il 
 lustrate his hero-worship, undimmed in trying days. 
 
 During these years of general writing Simms was coming 
 to his own in England. Several of his novels had been printed 
 there and had no mean measure of popularity. In Germany, 
 too, his best romances were following Cooper s in translation. 
 These facts must have given Simms a just self-respect which 
 explains much of his optimism. His home life continued 
 prosperous and happy, though sorrow shared the house when 
 three of his children died in infancy. Three others, born 
 before 1848, grew up a son named after him, and two daugh 
 ters, Mary Lawson and Chevillette Eliza. 
 
 VI 
 
 By 1852 Simms had made some excursions into the drama; 
 indeed, he had written everything but an epic. In this year, 
 however, he fortunately returned to his best vein with the ro 
 mance called at first The Sword and The Distaff, or Fair, Fat, 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 163 
 
 and Forty, republished two years later as Woodcraft. This 
 book concludes the adventures of Lieutenant Porgy and the 
 other surviving characters of the Revolutionary trilogy; in 
 many aspects it is the best of the distended series, full of 
 spirited characters and remarkable scenes. No other of 
 Simms novels gives perhaps a stronger taste of his quality, the 
 distinction of his subject and manner from Cooper s. Doubt 
 less many a boy, attracted by the title, has made Simms ac 
 quaintance first in this story; and he can still recall that stirring 
 panorama of the embarking British army, and the kidnapping 
 of Bostwick and his reappearance before McKewn, and clear 
 est of all, the examination and murder of the outlaw Norris. 
 These are such scenes as Stevenson delighted in, ganglions 
 of romance, which embody character and emotion in an act 
 or attitude remarkably striking to the mind s eye. 
 
 No matter how undisciplined his genius, Simms could not 
 drive a pen over so many thousand pages without learning 
 something of his craft, and this romance is swifter, closer 
 knit and simpler than anything that had gone before. The 
 plot is built of few elements. Porgy, returning from the war 
 to his estate, finds himself heavily in debt to an unscrupulous 
 spy named McKewn, who by pretending to serve both British 
 and Americans has got his clutches upon much valuable 
 property, including Porgy s. The lieutenant is in love with 
 Mrs. Eveleigh, a rich widow whose comfortable estate ad 
 joins his; yet his attentions are free from mercenary calcula 
 tions. McKewn hires several ruffians, led by Bostwick, to 
 steal some slaves from Mrs. Eveleigh; the gang overdo their 
 part, attack the lady herself, and get into a most sanguinary 
 fight with her son and her overseer, Fordham. Porgy and 
 his troopers come to the rescue; the remainder of the story is 
 taken up with the actual warfare between Bostwick and 
 Porgy, and the legal warfare between Porgy and McKewn. . 
 
 Mrs. Eveleigh is a remarkable character, drawn with such 
 
164 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 individual traits that she suggests no counterpart in Simms or 
 Cooper. She is a woman of great dignity, yet with that ca 
 pacity for "managing" which is usually ascribed to New 
 England heroines. She has both humor and common sense; 
 there is never the slightest danger that she will marry the 
 valiant Porgy, much as she likes him; and her initial success 
 in recovering her slaves from the British is an augury of her 
 fitness to cope with McKewn. Her character does not be 
 long to romance at all; the charm of it is its rounded truth to 
 life. Even in the excitement of the robber attack she is un- 
 heroic, though brave; Simms describes her mingled indigna 
 tion and fright with a tactful art that saves her both to reality 
 and to sympathy. 
 
 Fordham, her overseer the trained backwoodsman and 
 fighter, is one of Simms scouts, far different from Cooper s 
 type. He too is in no way superhuman; in the story he be 
 gins his adventures by being knocked senseless and bound 
 hand and foot by the robbers, and he is released by the negro 
 girl, Jenny. But he gives the impression of force and skill, 
 and his loyalty is as great as Leatherstocking s. He is in no 
 respect a philosopher; perhaps that makes his chief distinc 
 tion from the Northern scout; he is simply a man of action and 
 he rarely talks. His relation to his employer, Mrs. Eveleigh, 
 illustrates more truly than Simms perhaps realized the demo 
 cratic ideals that would follow such a struggle as the Revolu 
 tion, where men must learn to reckon with each other in terms 
 of intrinsic manhood. 
 
 This unconscious record of democracy is of course most 
 clear in the description of Porgy and his band. The fat lieu 
 tenant would be a poor encourager of class feeling under any 
 conditions, and in the guerilla warfare he and his men had 
 become sworn brothers. Yet in this last account of him Porgy 
 is less fat to the imagination, more nearly a romantic hero, 
 than in the other stories. For one thing, he appears as a 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 165 
 
 leader, instead of a mere follower in Marion s camp or Single 
 ton s; and his private troubles give occasion for more dig 
 nified forbearance than he had been credited with. He is 
 still, however, the center of the humor of the story. The scene 
 in which the sheriff comes to attach his property and finds the 
 covered dishes at table to contain convenient pistols, is one of 
 the best comedy episodes in our literature, funny of itself, and 
 true to the characters that act it. And Porgy s twofold at 
 tempt at matrimony, which results in his rejection by Mrs. 
 Eveleigh and Mrs. Griffin almost at the same time, is from 
 an artistic point of view a most successful solution of his 
 career; he remains unheroic and ludicrous, and the reader is 
 satisfied that he is not heartbroken, since he could transfer 
 his suit so quickly. 
 
 The power Simms had developed earlier in portraying low 
 villains and murderers gives to this story some of its most strik 
 ing scenes. Bostwick, the hired ruffian, is at first simply a 
 stock figure from the rogue s gallery, but as the story pro 
 gresses he becomes a most interesting individual. Nothing 
 like him had appeared before in the American novel. When 
 he is drugged and carried off to sea, he gains vastly in the 
 reader s sympathy; at the close of the story he is ennobled 
 into an incarnation of nemesis. But the transformation is 
 logical, he loses none of his original villainy, and his whole 
 course, from end to end, is seen to have been ordered by his 
 own perverted moral sense. He is at his worst when with his 
 neglected family. To speak truth, Mrs. Bostwick, ill-treated 
 creature that she is, and little Dory, her saint-like daughter, 
 are the chief disappointments of the book. How tiresomely 
 good they can be may be seen at the end of the fifty -fifth chap 
 ter, where little Dory tells Arthur Eveleigh to go home and 
 ask his mother s forgiveness for making her angry. The irrev 
 erent reader, keyed up to the healthy tone of adventure every 
 where else in the book, finds these soft spots in the road rather 
 
i66 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 slow going, and feels unwarranted sympathy with the father 
 who stays away from that home. Yet the fact remains that 
 Bostwick treats his sickly wife cruelly, and he is least interest 
 ing in her presence. His character is most powerfully brought 
 out in the great episode of the book, the trial of Norris, where 
 he feels justified in killing the tortured comrade who is about 
 to confess. 
 
 That Simms could have written so stirring a romance in the 
 midst of fierce distractions is simply another proof that he was 
 a born story-teller. He was in the thick of political contro 
 versy these days, contributing to the slavery propaganda and 
 carrying on a heated warfare with Lorenzo Sabine, the 
 Northern historian, who had cast some discredit on South 
 Carolina s share in the Revolution. At another season 
 Simms acquaintance with the history of his state might have 
 brought him through the debate with honor, but he lost his 
 temper and indulged in general compliments at the expense of 
 Northern patriots. 
 
 In 1854 he gave some successful lectures in Virginia and 
 published under a pseudonym a very ambitious story, Vas- 
 conselos: a Romance of the New World. The fortunes of De 
 Soto presented admirable material for the romancer, and 
 Simms had kept the theme in mind since the days when he 
 had visited his father and found the forgotten grave. The 
 book fails because of the author s lack of taste that want of 
 artistic sense that distinguishes between morbidly interesting 
 and really charming incident. The story has plot and charac 
 ter and fine descriptions, and its subject is great, but the 
 glamor of romance is rubbed off it in so many places that it 
 cuts a sorry figure. Simms had allowed his thoughts to dwell 
 too long on murder stories and ruffianly scenes; his imagina 
 tion now filled his books with a tiresomely long list of unde 
 sirable citizens. 
 
 During this same year appeared Southward Ho! the 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 167 
 
 collection of stories already referred to, and in the two follow 
 ing years he completed The Forayers and its sequel, Eutaw, 
 intended to form the connecting links between Katharine 
 Walton and Woodcraft. In the rapid interest of the adventure 
 and the general atmosphere of guerilla warfare the se volumes 
 hold the reader almost as well as the other members of the 
 series. If they seem to fall short at all, it is because the other 
 stories have preceded them and the reader has supped a bit 
 too full of horrors. Porgy and Marion s men, the English 
 troopers and the villainous robber gangs that made the war 
 their own occasion, still pour from the swamps and thickets, 
 butcher each other and on retiring leave a corpse or two swing 
 ing in the breeze. A very little of that sort of literature goes a 
 long way, and Simms imagined far too much of it. There is 
 no excuse in a book designed to give pleasure for such an 
 episode as that in Eutaw, where Hurricane Nell arrives just 
 in time to see her brother hanged, whom she had tried so hard 
 to rescue. 
 
 In this character of Hurricane Nell Simms gave expression 
 to his interest in a popular kind of metaphysics; and what 
 ever the scientific weaknesses might be in his knowledge of 
 psychology, he makes an impressive artistic use of it in this 
 strange creature, gifted with second sight. Her eccentric ap 
 parel, her horsemanship, and the immunity she enjoys among 
 the harmful wild creatures of the swamps give her outwardly 
 a weird distinction, and her astonishing divinations are re 
 ported with such tact that the reader as well as her wretched 
 brother is impressed, if not convinced. In the handling of 
 abnormal character Simms often shows unexpected shrewd 
 ness. It would have been tempting to most romancers to 
 create in this unusual individuality a motive center for the 
 plot; so much supernatural wisdom at first sight ought not to 
 go to waste. At least Nell could have a controlling influence 
 in the events, like Norna of the Fitful Head. But in real life 
 
168 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the gift of second sight is never put to use, indeed, it is dis 
 tinguished from ordinary foresight only when it has come to 
 nothing; and Simms follows his historical material closely, 
 leaving Nell as a tragic figure on the outskirts of his story. 
 
 Hell-Fire Dick and Hurricane Nell give Eutqw an advan 
 tage in interest over The Forayers. Dick s chance acquaint 
 ance with Pilgrim s Progress and the services the great alle 
 gory renders him, are things to remember with affection; 
 little that Simms wrote is more charming. Perhaps it is a 
 touch of sentimentality that associates with Bunyan s book 
 Henry Travis s reluctance to murder a defenseless man, and 
 Dick in his repentant mood is a curiously warped specimen of 
 morality, but in his soldier interest in Christian s warfare he 
 is delightful. The secret of the charm is Simms own love of 
 Bunyan, a lifelong passion; by ascribing to Dick the naive 
 interest a child would take in the book, he recorded his own 
 memories and came at the true character of the border ruffian. 
 
 VII 
 
 These volumes completed the series of historical romances 
 of the Revolution. They mark also the end of whatever good 
 fortune Simms was to enjoy. From the moment of their pub 
 lication the great war closed in upon him, in one way or an 
 other, and he began to feel the edge of the disaster to which he 
 and his nearest friends were blindly urging their state. In his 
 trips to the North, which he had made through all these years 
 whenever a book was to be published, he did what missionary 
 work he could for the cause of slavery, and got something of a 
 reputation for his vehement haranguing on the subject. In 
 the winter of 1856 a Northern lecture tour was arranged for 
 him, which ought to have benefited both himself and the 
 country. Unfortunately he began the tour, at a lecture in 
 New York on November 18, with a reply to his old adversary, 
 Sabine, and a passing attack upon Charles Sumner. His 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 169 
 
 audience listened in courteous silence for an hour and a half, 
 and when he ended they gave him a round of applause, but at 
 his next lecture, three nights later, only seventeen people ap 
 peared. Simms abandoned the tour, much hurt at the treat 
 ment, while the Northern papers congratulated him on get 
 ting off so easily. His own disappointment was probably no 
 greater than that of his Northern friends, Bancroft, Bryant, 
 Duyckinck and others, who had planned the tour. 
 
 On his return to the South his adventures in the enemy s 
 country reflected a certain credit upon him, at least his 
 friends thought so, and they arranged for him other less am 
 bitious tours. He was becoming also something of a dictator 
 among the younger Southern writers, most of whom must 
 have met him in his innumerable magazine editings. They 
 formed a club in his honor, where he played Dr. Johnson in a 
 broad style to their admiration, rejoicing much in their gen 
 erous loyalty, and proud of his nickname among them, 
 "Father Abbott." In their youthful idolizing of the veteran 
 writer only a few of them perceived that his social ways be 
 longed to a departing order, nor did they consider it other 
 than a tribute to his style of conversation that neighbors two 
 blocks off were aware of it. So much for his evenings with the 
 club; he often had their companionship less formally, in 
 bookshops or in their offices, where his presence, however 
 welcome, probably made sad havoc with their routine duties. 
 The inevitable blossom of all this enthusiastic soil was an 
 other periodical, Russell s Magazine, edited by Paul Hayne 
 and W. B. Carlisle. Simms was a contributor, and the ven 
 ture had the look of prosperity until the war killed it in 1860. 
 
 But there were some of the literary youth of South Carolina 
 who resented Simms leadership and managed to wound his 
 large heart. And in 1858 the yellow fever invaded Charles 
 ton and two of his sons died in the same day. This was the 
 sort of blow from which not even a heroic nature could re- 
 
VH 
 
 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 cover. A month later, recalling his dead father s advice not 
 to stay in Charleston, Simms wrote, " Thirty odd years have 
 passed, and I can now mournfully say the old man was right. 
 All that I have done has been poured to waste in Charleston, 
 which has never smiled on any of my labors, which has stead 
 ily ignored my claims, which has disparaged me to the last, 
 has been the last place to give me its adhesion, to which I owe 
 no favor, having never received an office, or a compliment, or 
 a dollar at her hands; and, with the exception of some dozen 
 of her citizens, who have been kind to me, and some scores of 
 her young men, who have honored me with a loving sympathy 
 and something like reverence, which has always treated me 
 rather as a public enemy, to be sneered at, than as a dutiful 
 son doing her honor. And I, too, know it as a place of tombs. 
 I have buried six dear children within its soil ! Great God ! 
 What is the sort of slavery which brings me hither!" 
 
 His friends tried to cheer him, and he did what he could for 
 himself by writing at a new romance, The Cassique oj Kiawah, 
 published in 1859. The book showed that Simms still had the 
 mastery of such incidents as raids and chases, and in the part 
 of the story that is on the sea his imagination is a sufficient 
 substitute for the experience he lacked. It was probably to 
 his advantage that the period in which the story is placed is 
 earlier than his minute knowledge reached, for the tale is 
 freer of bald historical passages than many of his romances. 
 The flutter of approval which the novel stirred among his 
 friends and perhaps among a more public audience did not 
 presage any immortality for it, but the praise must have been 
 grateful to Simms, and therefore it is pleasant to remember. 
 
 Plow little the South in general appreciated his services was 
 painfully illustrated by the omission of his name from the 
 list of editors invited in 1856 to prepare a "series of books 
 in every department of study, from the earliest primer to 
 the highest grade of literature and science" the series to be 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 171 
 
 for the general improvement of the Southern youth through 
 books not tainted with Northern notions of civilization and 
 freedom. The natural protest against this ignoring of the 
 South s only important man of letters came from a New York 
 journal, and Simms unappreciative state was roused to take 
 notice of his existence by appointing him to educational 
 boards and conventions; but Simms was not deceived, and 
 continued to grieve over his rejection by his own people. 
 
 But personal regrets and sorrows, lack of appreciation, or 
 the loss of his Charleston house by fire, in 1860, were not al 
 lowed to overshadow Simms great concern in the coming 
 Presidential election. He hoped for a break between the 
 North and South, though if possible not a bloody one, and the 
 election of Lincoln was to him a signal for the new Confed 
 eracy which should be founded upon slavery. However other 
 Southerners might prefer to phrase the issue, Simms still 
 frankly advocated slavery. When it was clearly a matter of 
 fighting for his principles, his main regret was that he him 
 self, on account of age and ill-health, could not go to the front. 
 But he could write voluminous/ letters to his friends suggest 
 ing defenses for Charleston harbor with an amateur s assur 
 ance, with a soundness of judgment, too, that was later dem 
 onstrated in the practice of his theories; he could also have 
 his say, time and again, on the main theme of slavery. One 
 who reads his life pauses often at this period of it if one is a 
 Northerner to wonder at his frankness, and to compare 
 much of his reasoning with Lincoln s in spite of the difference 
 in their conclusions. We almost hear the echoes of the Cooper 
 Institute speech, strangely transformed, in such words as 
 these, "Either negro slavery is a beneficent, merciful, God- 
 chartered institution, or it is not. If beneficent, why limit it ? 
 Is it better for the negro to be a barbarian and savage in his 
 own country, than to work out his deliverance in this? If 
 better, why be at the pains to cast censure on the morals of 
 
172 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the institution?" Be it said for the credit of Simms logic in 
 this passage that he takes for granted the beneficence of 
 slavery because he is writing to another Southerner. 
 
 In 1861 two more of his children died of fever, and a year 
 later Woodlands was burned down. The cause of the fire was 
 not discovered, nor could it have made much difference; 
 everything was lost except a new wing of the building, into 
 which most of his library was carried and saved. His manu 
 scripts had been packed a few days before, in readiness for 
 flight from the Yankees; their preservation was his brightest 
 comfort. He wrote to a friend, with a flash of his old courage, 
 that he did not despair nor despond, but added that it took all 
 his strength to endure such repeated strokes of fortune. 
 
 The desperate sorrow of these years is written plainest in 
 those letters in which he cherishes his hopes in the face of un- 
 disguisable ruin. How pathetic is his faith! "It cannot be 
 that God will deliver us into the hands of these atrocious 
 heathens. As between us and the Deity, there is no doubt a 
 sad reckoning to make; but as between us and these accursed 
 Yankees, no reproach lies at our doors, unless that single one 
 of having too long slept within the coils of the serpent. I 
 have faith in God, my friend. He may punish us, and we 
 must suffer, for this is the meed of our desert; but he will not 
 let us sink. I have faith in his promise, in his mercy, and I 
 know that after this tribulation, our peace shall return once 
 more, our prosperity, our friends; and the song of the turtle 
 shall be heard in the land. " 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell on the long series of disasters 
 that fell on Simms during the war. His wife died on Septem 
 ber 10, 1863; after that sorrow he felt that no suffering in 
 comparison could seem great. He was in Columbia during 
 the sack of the city by Sherman s troops, but was protected by 
 a young officer who had the bright good fortune to know and 
 appreciate his stories. But the young officer s desire to do 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 173 
 
 honor to literature in Simms person could not save the rem 
 nant of Woodlands nor the library it contained; after an ex 
 amination by the Northern soldiers, the place was left to the 
 mercy of stragglers or incendiaries or negroes, who ever did 
 it, the place was burned to the ground. When a friend offered 
 his condolence, Simms exclaimed, "Talk not to me about my 
 losses, when the State is lost." 
 
 Nor is it necessary to speak at length of the years immedi 
 ately following the war years almost as tragic for the South 
 erner as the war itself. Simms bore the change with the ut 
 most courage. His chief support financially he earned by his 
 connection with newspapers, editing the Daily South Caro 
 linian with Timrod, and writing for other journals. Wood 
 lands was practically worthless as a source of income, for the 
 freed negroes would not work, and Gilmore Simms, the eldest 
 son, found he could get nothing out of the place. Economic 
 conditions in Charleston were so wretched that all who could 
 go elsewhere did so; Simms himself thought of coming North, 
 if for no other reason, to escape the horde of unfortunates who 
 tried to earn money by writing and appealed to him to place 
 their work. He did actually go North for a few months, but 
 the trip was largely a business visit to his publishers; he was 
 not the man to be content at such a moment away from his 
 people. On his return he began a serial story, Joscelyn, for a 
 magazine, and prepared for the press a volume of war poems 
 by various authors, a collection that on the whole did more 
 credit to his patriotic impulses than to his critical faculty. 
 
 The younger writers in his club still looked up to him for<xKu 
 guidance, and he continued to exercise his unselfish faculty of 
 cheering and inspiring other men. He was sorely needed ; per 
 haps if we could judge men s lives correctly we should find 
 that his noblest achievement was in the leadership of those 
 years. Timrod was practically starving; Hayne was as poor, 
 if not as helpless. How miserable his own situation was 
 
174 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Simms does not let us see, though we can guess from the fact 
 that in the house where he stayed there were practically three 
 families, sixteen persons in all, and their total income was 
 thirty dollars a week. He could write bravely, however, even 
 of such conditions: " Fortunately my daughters have all been 
 taught to do their own work, fit their own dresses, and they go 
 to work cheerfully, and sing merrily while they toil; and their 
 elasticity helps to encourage and strengthen me in my labor. 
 The picture of Irving, etc., will help to cover the bomb-shell 
 holes still in our walls. The room in which I sleep is still ex 
 coriated with those missiles." From this room, which he 
 shared with two sons, he managed to collect from Northern 
 and masonic friends money for the relief of destitute families, 
 and between his literary labors he distributed these funds, all 
 too little, among the Charleston poor. 
 
 In 1867 he and his daughter Mary paid a visit to New York, 
 and their Northern friends, learning of their presence, enter 
 tained them royally. His reputation in that part of the coun 
 try had grown even outside of the large circle of his friends; 
 his entertainment was in fact so incessantly hospitable that he 
 fell ill. His return to the South in September was made sad 
 by the death of Timrod, whose illness had added to Simms 
 burdens of sympathy. He took the remaining copies of 
 Timrod s poems off the hands of the Northern publishers and 
 sold them in the South for the benefit of Timrod s family. 
 
 In the next year Simms started to build a small frame house 
 on the site of Woodlands, for he had definitely given up the 
 thought of living in any other section of the country. Modest 
 as his plans were, the building proved costly and trouble 
 some, so much so that he was in desperate straits by the time 
 it was finished. He paid a flying visit to the North to make 
 contracts for stories, and he says he was writing at the time 
 two romances at once. His historical collection, material 
 bearing upon the history of South Carolina, he had been 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 175 
 
 forced to sell; now he sent to a Northern friend all the auto 
 graphs in his possession which he thought worth saving. The 
 Southern journals for which he wrote failed to pay him. At 
 the end of the year he was living at Woodlands again in four 
 rooms all he could afford to build. 
 
 Simms practically ended his life by overwork. For nine 
 months he worked at his desk without walking a mile a week ; 
 by this sacrifice of all wholesome exercise he managed to com 
 plete two romances, but broke down before he could finish 
 the third. The quality of these last stories is what might be 
 expected from the circumstances of their creation. Simms 
 was no longer writing for fame nor for art, but for bread. He 
 was too old to recover from such a debauch of toil. By 
 June, 1870, he and his friends realized his alarming condition, 
 but the end was sooner perhaps than any expected. His mag 
 nificent physique was completely broken down, and he died 
 at Charleston on June n. 
 
 VIII 
 
 One who makes the acquaintance of the writings or the life 
 of Simms is easily persuaded of the verdict long ago pro 
 nounced upon him, that he was far nobler than his books. 
 Even with such an opinion one can find room to call his books 
 noble too; their faults were the result of the time and place in 
 which they were written, but their excellencies make them kin 
 to all high romance. Like Cooper, Simms is remembered 
 chiefly for a series of books the Revolutionary romances 
 and one or two other masterpieces standing alone. In the 
 border strife of Guy Rivers he discovered his great knack of 
 portraying the outlaw in the South and Southwest; in the Rev 
 olutionary romances he combined this outlaw interest with 
 historical portraiture, thus linking the two strains of his gen 
 ius. As his career advanced he became more realistic, not 
 always to the advantage of his art. The Yemassee, coming 
 
1 76 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 early, was his purest romance and the best expression of the 
 poetry in him. Though it does not belong to his great cycle 
 of stories, it is near them all by virtue of that love of his state 
 out of which sprang everything worthy that Simms wrote. 
 
 If one considers the Revolutionary tales, from The Partisan 
 to Woodcraft, taking the order in which they should be read, 
 one is aware of Simms two chief faults. Though a prolific 
 writer, he is not creative in the highest sense; by comparison 
 Cooper s range seems enormous. From book to book, 
 crowded with incident though they are, Simms repeats his 
 situations and characters, working almost by a formula. The 
 outlaws must be hanged, the young officers must fall in love 
 with the daughters of the enemy, the heroine must be held in 
 duress by the cruel rival, or must bestow her hand as the 
 price of her father s life. These melodramatic situations 
 Simms can vary with astounding power; if one were to read 
 any single romance, the impression of forceful genius would be 
 absolute, but with each additional volume of the series the 
 impression lessens. 
 
 The second weakness in almost all of Simms work is one 
 of art, a fault that could have been remedied by better 
 methods of work. Few of his stories have unity of tone, or 
 " blend." They seem to have been written in unrelated 
 moods. No one atmosphere envelopes them. In this respect 
 the contrast with Cooper s best work is striking. It might be 
 said that the cause of this fault was poverty of imagination; 
 but it is more reasonable to think that if Simms had written 
 with fewer distractions and had revised his work, he could 
 have attained that unity of effect that art demands. In some 
 of his shorter works, such as The Maroon, he did succeed in 
 giving to the poetic story absolute keeping, and if he could do 
 it in a short story he might have done it in a long one. 
 
 But matters of art are somewhat beside the point in his 
 work. He was a story-teller, and when all is said, his best 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 177 
 
 stories were well worth telling and are still worth reading. 
 We should count him precious in our literature if we did not 
 have Cooper, for they two alone tell us on the grand scale a 
 story for its own sake. Both came of romancing blood. The 
 myth-making faculty that slept in Cooper s Northland in 
 heritance was matched by the Celtic fire of legend and loyalty 
 in Simms. Though he was typical of the South, and of the 
 North too in his historical conscience, he was Celtic in his 
 love of purely unmoral incident. Cooper makes the successes 
 of his scouts a matter of skill and character; Simms in his 
 most stirring moments makes them matters of happy circum 
 stances, irresistible as Cuchullain s luck. 
 
 Yet in one literary way Simms will always be more than 
 anything else a type of the South. From the beginning to the 
 end of his work he dwelt lovingly upon his country s past, 
 with a sad sense of faded glory. The young Southerner now 
 thinks of the days before the war as the happy prime of his 
 state, and is melancholy over her lost battle-fields, but in that 
 very prime Simms was thinking as sadly of the bright days of 
 Revolutionary honor. Perhaps there was something Celtic, 
 too, in this habitual retrospect. But it is probably fair to say 
 that the Southern social system, doomed from the beginning, 
 preyed upon the imagination of this man, and of many others, 
 with a subtle consciousness of retrogression. Cooper had 
 showed America the road to the frontier of its dreams; prog 
 ress was his great theme. Simms looked backward like the 
 immortal Spanish Don, almost as lovable and almost as 
 forlorn. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 HAWTHORNE and Poe are the artists of American literature. 
 Poe s claims to the leading place can be made strong by in 
 cluding all his varied achievements, in prose and verse. But 
 as a novelist Hawthorne has no rival in his own country for 
 literary skill, for sustained excellence on a large scale, for 
 the management of plot, and for the magic of language that 
 denotes the master of style. And the rivalry with Poe ceases 
 entirely when we leave these more external matters and turn 
 to the content of Hawthorne s work; for his genius expressed 
 so completely a remarkable phase of human experience, that 
 his name stands more for his subject than for his treatment of 
 it. He is the novelist, as Emerson is the poet, of New Eng 
 land. The Puritan character which Cooper failed to sympa 
 thize with, is the very subject of Hawthorne s work; so that if 
 he has limitations in comparison with the universal story 
 tellers, like Scott or Balzac, the deficiency is not so much in 
 the small amount of his product as in his inability to see life 
 except as a Puritan world, from a Puritan standpoint; and 
 the limitation is more clearly defined by his temperamental 
 preoccupation with one aspect of the Puritan nature. 
 
 New England s contribution to the American novel is rep 
 resented chiefly in Hawthorne and Mrs. Stowe. The two 
 writers are complementary, exhibiting to an almost exagger 
 ated degree the paradox of Puritanism. The devotion to a 
 cause in action, the yearning to achieve the kingdom of God 
 in a practical way on earth, and the great efficiency of the at- 
 
 179 
 
l8o LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 tempt, these Puritan traits make up the genius of the author 
 of Uncle Tom s Cabin. But the Puritan had more subtle 
 experiences than these, especially as he drew away from his 
 definite religion. When he desired to build the kingdom of 
 God, he looked for the pattern of it, not in history nor in the 
 fortunes of those about him, but in his own heart. The 
 prime requisite of his way of life was that he should be free to 
 know himself, to learn his dreams as a first step toward 
 bringing them forth; therefore he was a solitary, preoccupied 
 figure, even among others of his kind, and the outer world 
 had most value to him as a molding influence upon his vis 
 ion. Such a temperament as is here indicated was perilous 
 to art, finding little joy in the natural senses, and holding 
 but weakly to the reality of matter-of-fact things. From its 
 peril Spenser and Milton were saved by the enormous flood of 
 Renaissance tradition and by the imperative call to practical 
 duties, which redeemed in both the thinness of their ascetic 
 natures. But to many a Puritan the spectacle of life became 
 less real than his thoughts, since his dream of the world was 
 more fixed than the world itself; he approached all experience 
 with a mental reservation, with the scientist s experimental 
 mood, as though the moment might prove a touchstone of 
 truth and falsehood, to lighten or leave darkened his soul. 
 This subjective habit of Puritanism, almost to the exclusion of 
 other aspects, is the secret of Hawthorne s character and 
 writings. 
 
 The solitude of his life is sometimes attributed to the cus 
 tom of his boyhood, when he dwelt in extreme seclusion with 
 his lonely family. But his mother s preference for a hermit 
 way of living was itself the expression of the brooding, phi 
 losophizing mind the son inherited. To her temperament as 
 to his, it was desirable to be alone. 
 
 That each should in his house abide, 
 Therefore was the world so wide, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 181 
 
 sings Emerson; and when Hawthorne in his maturity visited 
 Shakspere s birthplace, he wondered how the poet s genius 
 could unfold in a house that permitted so little solitude. The 
 remark illustrates both his difficulty in comprehending the 
 nature of Shakspere s genius, and the peculiar quality of his 
 own. His life seems one long attempt to get away by himself, 
 where the world could not take hold on him. Had he been a 
 complete Puritan, some zeal for realizing his dream would 
 have gone with the dream itself. But all action was foreign 
 to his temper; no reform, no battle, not even the pleasant 
 duties of daily life, ever wholly engaged his interest. And in 
 his stories he portrayed men from the point of view his own 
 habit involved, as undergoing life and watching the effect, 
 rather than living it and causing it to be. His interest is never 
 in action, in the sense that applies to Scott or Cooper; in few 
 of his books is the active side of Puritanism represented, and 
 in fewer still is there record of any achievement, of the kind 
 that ordinarily makes life and books satisfactory; it is little to 
 him whether his characters, judged by tangible results, suc 
 ceed or fail. The actions that condition the story frequently 
 occur before it begins, and are left untold. He has eyes only 
 for the effect of life upon character as it follows from the char 
 acter s own will, or from the actions of others. 
 
 Evidently so great a genius as Hawthorne s, occupied with 
 a unique expression of humanity, should not be quarreled 
 with if what he says and the way he says it are quite unlike 
 anything else found in novels. To all readers and they are 
 the majority who prefer the picture of life that is vital and 
 reproduces without apparent reflection the flood of common 
 or romantic incident, Hawthorne makes to some extent an 
 ineffectual appeal; and if to think be contrary to man s na 
 ture as it is to his habit, they are right who would place his 
 genius in an inferior rank. But it is obviously unjust to pass 
 sentence upon him, as recent and able criticism has done, be- 
 
182 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 cause his stories present no strong sense of outward reality, 
 and his very characters often seem to themselves as it were 
 creatures of a trance. To condemn his work on such grounds 
 is simply to complain that instead of being a realist, he is a 
 psychologist and a poet. The Puritan vision in him is his 
 only reality, and by comparison the outside world seems to 
 him a thing of phantom and allegory. He is the child of the 
 author of the Faerie Queene. 
 
 II 
 
 William Hawthorne, or Hathorne, the novelist s ancestor 
 who transplanted a branch of the family line from Wiltshire to 
 New England, seems not to have been an ineffectual Puritan. 
 Whatever visionary traits he may have had are swallowed up 
 by time, while the record of his energy is still distinct. He 
 came over with Winthrop to Boston, in 1630, and settling 
 in Dorchester, promptly became a leader among his fellows, 
 in the legislature, where he was Speaker for seven or eight 
 years; in the practical improvement of the settlement, clear 
 ing the forests and planting the fields; in warfare against the 
 Indians and in explorations, even until he was seventy years 
 old; in rigid enforcement of the laws, condemning murderers 
 or Quakers to the scaffold or the whipping-post; in business 
 ventures, in which he succeeded; and finally in preaching, 
 which he seems to have done with vigor and effect. That he 
 had the finer qualities of the spirit is suggested by a copy of 
 Sidney s Arcadia, in his possession, and his ability to write 
 with the dignity of his age and with much personal adroitness 
 is proved by his letter to Secretary Morrice, in 1666, declining 
 to obey the order of Charles II summoning Governor Belling- 
 ham and himself to England. The old Puritan puts the case 
 of the Colonies with sound reasoning and much picturesque- 
 ness; the flame of liberty burning in him is concealed more or 
 less by wise policy, but it breaks out finely in a prophetic hint 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 183 
 
 as to where the Colonies may arrive if they fail of their rights : 
 "What extremity may force them to, that God only knows, 
 who is wonderful in counsel and mighty in working, whose 
 thoughts are not as man s, and his counsel only shall stand." 
 
 In the next generation John Hawthorne became the chief 
 person of the family, a narrower Puritan than his father, but 
 only less able. As Judge he presided at several witchcraft 
 trials, and a curse was laid on him and his blood by one he 
 condemned to die. During his life the family lost the title- 
 deed to the land in Maine where afterwards the town of Ray 
 mond grew up, and the papers were recovered only when the 
 claim had become valueless. Both incidents the novelist used 
 in The House 0} the Seven Gables. The other Hawthornes of 
 that generation took to the sea, and like their father were ac 
 tive, efficient men. 
 
 Of a different temper was Joseph Hawthorne, the next of 
 the line. He was a quiet-loving person with a bent toward 
 agriculture; the family genius skipped a generation and left 
 him undisturbed. His son Daniel, however, had both am 
 bition and capacity, and was a lover of the sea. In the Revo 
 lution he commanded a privateer, Fair America, whose ad 
 ventures were chronicled in an old ballad, and he got himself 
 the popular title of " Bold Daniel." He wooed the Muse too, 
 in a practical short-hand sort of way; a girl named Mary 
 Rondel won his heart, and he used to underline amatory por 
 tions of the A rcadia in his great-grandfather s precious copy, 
 wherein Mary evidently read and found love-confessions 
 ready-made. But the courtship proved a failure, the lovers 
 apparently quarreled, and Mary died. Daniel laid aside the 
 Arcadia and won the hand of Rachel Phelps by more direct 
 methods. His son Nathaniel, born in 1775, was a sea-captain 
 of reserved, melancholy manner, but of considerable ability. 
 He married Elizabeth Clarke Manning, a woman of beauty 
 and character, whose ancestry was as honorable and sturdy 
 
1 84 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 as his own. When he died in 1 808 he left her with two daugh 
 ters, Elizabeth and Louise, and a son, Nathaniel, the future 
 novelist. 
 
 Heredity and family history seems to count even more 
 with Hawthorne than with most writers. A nature as sen 
 sitive as his to all noble influences would find much fasci 
 nation in the past, and he allowed it to affect him in other 
 ways than through the inheritance of blood and temperament. 
 The tradition of strong characters made gentler and perhaps 
 weaker by time, such as the memory of his house handed 
 down, from the immigrant ancestor to his thoughtful father 
 and secluded mother, came to be almost his habitual concep 
 tion of life. In the shorter stories as well as in The House of 
 the Seven Gables and The Marble Faun, the plot is often 
 rooted in just such a transformation of a family, and in the 
 other tales, with hardly an exception, the effect of time and 
 its changes upon character is a constant theme, so that the 
 attention is fixed on the past. To reproduce early environ 
 ment or local or family traditions is of course nothing unusual 
 among writers; Cooper used his boyhood and his home for 
 his best material, and Scott far more conspicuously immortal 
 ized a traditional world. But Hawthorne s uniqueness is 
 best felt by contrast with these very novelists. They repro 
 duce the past as it occurred, with the panorama of events and 
 circumstances. Hawthorne reproduces its effects upon men s 
 character, with the minimum attention to the outward fact. 
 It is impossible for him to write any story whose interest is 
 entirely in the present; the story of the effect of life, his typi 
 cal theme, logically involves an interest in the previous cause, 
 so that the mind usually takes possession of his writings more 
 by exploring the past he suggests, than by living in the phan 
 tom present he tries to describe. 
 
 The home in which Hawthorne grew up was peculiarly 
 calculated to develop the poet and dreamer in him. From his 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 185 
 
 birth, July 4, 1804, until his father s death four years later, 
 the old Salem house probably differed little from many an 
 other sea captain s dwelling, but from the beginning of her 
 widowhood his mother cherished her sorrow in an extraordin 
 ary seclusion, eating her meals apart from the children, and 
 estranging them from natural social interests. The older 
 sister, Elizabeth, shared her mother s temperament, as did 
 Hawthorne himself, and their way of life simply developed 
 abnormally their meditative bent. The other sister, Louise, 
 younger than the novelist, had a more usual zest in the world 
 about her, and with opportunity would have taken the aver 
 age young girl s part in society. Only the strong Puritan 
 strain in all three children could have made so gloomy a 
 childhood lovable. They lived in their own thoughts, but 
 were affectionate, and their reverence for their remarkable 
 mother was very great. It is easy, however, to imagine that 
 Hawthorne s home life was more an experience of ideas than 
 of the heart; to his mother in her seclusion he could hardly be 
 bound by intimate daily ties, and his attitude toward her and 
 toward this aspect of his boyhood seems best indicated by his 
 self -analytical record of her death-bed, years later: 
 
 " About five o clock I went to my mother s chamber, and 
 was shocked to see such an alteration since my last visit. I 
 love my mother; but there has been, ever since boyhood, a 
 sort of coldness of intercourse between us, such as is apt to 
 come between persons of strong feelings if they are not man 
 aged rightly. I did not expect to be much moved at the 
 time, that is to say, not to feel any overpowering emotion 
 struggling just then, though I knew I should deeply remem 
 ber and regret her. Mrs. Dike was in the chamber; Louisa 
 pointed to a chair near the bed, but I was moved to kneel 
 down close by my mother, and take her hand. She knew me, 
 but could only murmur a few indistinct words; among which 
 I understood an injunction to take care of my sisters. Mrs. 
 Dike left the chamber, and then I found the tears slowly 
 gathering in my eyes. I tried to keep them down, but it 
 
1 86 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 would not be; I kept filling up, till, for a few moments, I 
 shook with sobs. For a long time I knelt there, holding her 
 hand; and surely it is the darkest hour I ever lived. After 
 wards I stood by the open window and looked through the 
 crevice of the curtain. The shouts, laughter, and cries of the 
 two children had come up into the chamber from the open 
 air, making a strange contrast with the death-bed scene. And 
 now, through the crevice of the curtain, I saw my little Una 
 of the golden locks, looking very beautiful, and so full of 
 spirits and life that she was life itself. And then I looked at 
 my poor dying mother, and seemed to see the whole of human 
 existence at once, standing in the dusky midst of it." 
 
 In his first years Hawthorne was an active boy, but from his 
 tenth year until he was twelve, an accident in an outdoor 
 game lamed him, and he was thrown upon mental resources 
 for occupation and amusement. His school-teacher, Dr. 
 Joseph Worcester of dictionary fame, gave Hawthorne his 
 lessons at home, and the boy found himself early in the great 
 poets, especially Shakspere, Milton, and Spenser. The first 
 book he ever bought was The Faerie Queene. Besides these 
 books and The Pilgrim s Progress, he read history and fic 
 tion; so that literature at its best was as much the foundation 
 of his art, as nature was the inspiration of Cooper s. 
 
 But strangely enough, Hawthorne s boyhood was com 
 pleted by an acquaintance with the wild forest not unlike 
 Cooper s. In 1818 his mother removed for a year to Ray 
 mond, Maine, where her brother Robert, who interested him 
 self in his nephew, had built a large house for himself and an 
 other for her. In the wilderness that inclosed the settlement 
 many of the conditions of the Otsego colony must have been 
 repeated the solitude, the frontier society, the waters on 
 which it was situated, Sebago Lake. Here Hawthorne spent 
 what he considered his happiest days, leading a pleasant ad 
 venturous life, boy-fashion. To this period belongs the First 
 Diary, which may or may not be genuine. If it is, the picture 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 187 
 
 of his year in Raymond shows a more normal, thought-free 
 character than we associate with him later. 
 
 In 1819 he was back in Salem with his uncles, Richard and 
 Robert Manning, his mother and sisters remaining in Ray 
 mond. The next two years were devoted to preparation for 
 college, with much literary activity besides. He wrote verses 
 and prose, and issued a short-lived paper, The Spectator, 
 which for four numbers circulated in the family. His reading 
 in general literature was continued and broadened, and in his 
 letters he ventured critical opinions on what he had read. 
 Scott s novels were his favorities, with Caleb Williams next in 
 order. Yet in the very letter in which his literary enthusiasm 
 is outpoured, he shows a trace of that irresolution in his atti 
 tude toward his art which was to appear often in his later life, 
 and which went with his contemplative nature. "I have al 
 most given up writing poetry," he says. "No man can be a 
 poet and a bookkeeper at the same time." It was not the last 
 time that he found himself ready to "give up" writing, or was 
 discouraged by the conflict of his inward vision and outward 
 circumstance. In a later letter to his mother he discussed the 
 choice of a profession in a mood which in spite of some play 
 fulness shows his temperamental reluctance to commit any 
 ideal to practice: "I have not yet concluded what profession 
 I shall have. The being a minister is of course out of the 
 question. I should not think that even you would desire me 
 to choose so dull a way of life. Oh, no, mother, I was not 
 born to vegetate forever in one place, and to live and die as 
 calm and as tranquil as a puddle of water. As to lawyers, 
 there are so many of them already that one-half of them (upon 
 a moderate calculation) are in a state of actual starvation. 
 A physician, then, seems to be Hobson s choice ; but yet I 
 should not like to live by the diseases and infirmities of my 
 fellow-creatures. And it would weigh very heavily on my 
 conscience, in the course of my practice, if I should chance to 
 
1 88 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 send any unlucky patient ad infernum, which being inter 
 preted is, to the realms below. Oh that I was rich enough 
 to live without a profession! What do you think of my be 
 coming an author, and relying for support on my pen ? In 
 deed, I think the illegibility of my handwriting is very author- 
 like." 
 
 In 1821 Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College, at Bruns 
 wick, Maine, in the class with Longfellow, and one year be 
 low Franklin Pierce, his close friend, who afterward became 
 President of the United States. The four years that followed 
 were happy and not wholly unprofitable, though Hawthorne 
 was no student, and his comparative poverty kept him from 
 much social activity. His expenses were paid by his uncle 
 Robert, and the fact that he was to that degree dependent 
 weighed somewhat on his New England pride, of which he 
 always had a good share. Though quiet and reserved, he 
 made friends and took part in the general college life per 
 haps more than an average part in the card-playing and 
 gambling that went on. At least he was singled out for mild 
 punishment in a crusade the authorities made against the 
 college card-players in the Spring of 1822, as a frank and self- 
 possessed letter to his mother announced ; and his companions 
 were among the more convivial, less studious fellows, at the 
 other end of the class from the scholarly Longfellow. Yet at 
 his graduation he stood eighteenth in the class of thirty-eight, 
 and was entitled to a Commencement part, which he for 
 feited, however, because of his unwillingness to speak in pub 
 lic. Pierce and others were his firm friends when he left, and 
 Horatio Bridge was his intimate companion. The impres 
 sion he made on the college was of self-respecting goodf ellow- 
 ship; to the few discerning ones he seemed to promise great 
 things, and they kept their faith in him. Bridge especially 
 encouraged him by his confidence, and Hawthorne later 
 wrote that his friend was more responsible than any one else 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 189 
 
 for his being a writer. The complete acknowledgment of 
 his indebtedness is in the dedicatory letter prefixed to The 
 Snow Image, and it illustrates Hawthorne s college days, 
 besides expressing his friendly gratitude: 
 
 "On you, if on no other person, I am entitled to rely, to 
 sustain the position of my Dedicatee. If anybody is respon 
 sible for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I know 
 not whence your faith came; but while we were lads together 
 at a country college, gathering blueberries, in study-hours, 
 under those tall academic pines; or watching the great logs, as 
 they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or shoot 
 ing pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in 
 the summer twilight; or catching trouts in that shadowy little 
 stream which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through 
 the forest, though you and I will never cast a line in it 
 again, two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to ac 
 knowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty 
 never heard of, or else it had been the worse for us, still it 
 was your prognostic of your friend s destiny, that he was to 
 be a writer of fiction. 
 
 "And a fiction-monger, in due season, he became. But 
 was there ever such a weary delay in obtaining the slightest 
 recognition from the public, as in my case ? I sat down by the 
 wayside of life, like a man under enchantment, and a shrub 
 bery sprang up around me, and the bushes grew to be sap 
 lings, and the saplings became trees, until no exit appeared 
 possible, through the entangling depths of my obscurity. And 
 there, perhaps, I should be sitting at this moment, with the 
 moss on the imprisoning tree trunks, and the yellow leaves of 
 more than a score of Autumns piled above me, if it had not 
 been for you. For it was through your intervention and 
 that, moreover, unknown to himself that your early friend 
 was brought before the public, somewhat more prominently 
 than theretofore, in the first volume of Twice Told Tales" 
 
 III 
 
 The patient solitude that Hawthorne here refers to figura 
 tively, was spent in the old house in Salem during practically 
 
I go LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the next twelve years. His mother had returned thither in 
 1822, somewhat against his wish, for he thought the seclusion 
 of Raymond better suited to her comfort. Now at the close 
 of his college course he rejoined the little family, and took up 
 with them a life of curious isolation. His mother s habits of 
 solitary mourning had not changed, and as his sisters grew 
 up, they also had formed separate habits, and lived each in 
 her own world. When Hawthorne took his place again in 
 the household it was with the determination to become a 
 writer; the necessary meditation of his art reinforced his 
 temperamental shyness and the home tradition, and it is no 
 wonder that he became perhaps the greatest recluse of the 
 group. The family rarely met, even at meals, and Haw 
 thorne seldom went out of his room, except for a walk in the 
 morning or evening. The mornings he spent in study, the 
 afternoons in writing, the evenings in reading. Later he 
 seems to have made some brief journeys in Connecticut, 
 Vermont, New York and New Hampshire, probably through 
 the generosity of his uncles, but the twelve years he spent in 
 the old Salem house remained in his memory as a single un 
 broken solitude. Not twenty people in Salem knew of his 
 existence, he thought, nor did his family share his ambition 
 beyond the necessary faith to allow him to attempt a living by 
 writing. He never read his stories and sketches to them; less 
 than any other author, perhaps, he was encouraged by the 
 proverbial audience of admiring relatives. If he gave in his 
 later writings the effect of low vitality, of a certain lack of 
 ambition, his long and silent devotion to his craft should cor 
 rect that impression, for the years in the lonely house are a 
 record of faithful work in discouraging conditions that the 
 most energetic writer might be proud of. 
 
 Nor were they, on the whole, unhappy years; they were too 
 busy for that. A passage in the preface to the complete edi 
 tion of Twice Told Tales, in 1851, relates the discouragements 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 191 
 
 of his devoted apprenticeship with a cheerfulness probably 
 not assumed with the good fortune of delayed success: 
 
 " Throughout the time above specified, he had no incitement 
 to literary effort in a reasonable prospect of reputation or 
 profit, nothing but the pleasure itself of composition an en 
 joyment not at all amiss in its way, and perhaps essential to 
 the merit of the work in hand, but which, in the long run, will 
 hardly keep the chill out of a writer s heart, or the numbness 
 out of his ringers. To this total lack of sympathy, at the age 
 when his mind would naturally have been most effervescent, 
 the public owe it (and it is certainly an effect not to be re 
 gretted on either part) that the author can show nothing for 
 the thought and industry of that portion of his life, save the 
 forty sketches, or thereabouts, included in these volumes. 
 
 "Much more, indeed, he wrote; and some very small part 
 of it might yet be rummaged out (but it would not be worth 
 the trouble) among the dingy pages of fifteen-or-twenty-year 
 old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers of faded 
 souvenirs. The remainder of the works alluded to had a very 
 brief existence, but, on the score of brilliancy, enjoyed a fate 
 vastly superior to that of their brotherhood, which succeeded 
 in getting through the press. In a word, the Author burned 
 them without mercy or remorse, and, moreover, without any 
 subsequent regret, and had more than one occasion to marvel 
 that such very dull stuff, as he knew his condemned manu 
 scripts to be, should yet have possessed inflammability enough 
 to set the chimney on fire!" 
 
 The first product of these days was Fanshawe, published 
 in 1828 in Boston. Hawthorne paid the cost of this book, one 
 hundred dollars, and as it proved a complete failure, he was 
 later at some pains to destroy all the copies he could get his 
 hands on, making his sister and his intimate friends surrender 
 their copies for another chimney blaze. After his death, how 
 ever, the story was reprinted from one volume that had es 
 caped his critical rigor. 
 
 Hawthorne s judgment in suppressing his inferior work was 
 always excellent; there never was, perhaps, a better self- 
 
192 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 critic. The stories and sketches he would have been glad to 
 let go undelayed to oblivion are not only clearly below his 
 quality, but sometimes they are different in kind, and seem 
 not to have been written by him at all. In Fanshawe there is 
 little to suggest his typical genius. There is no subtlety in the 
 well-defined characters, there is no brooding or meditating 
 upon life; the action is brisk, and the incident counts for more 
 than the persons. Hawthorne apparently was trying to write 
 in the Scott vein, that is, attempting the one thing he could 
 not accomplish, a romantic story of adventure. With no 
 knowledge of the stir of life to draw on for realistic incident, 
 he was hopelessly handicapped. That he turned to the col 
 lege world he had recently left, and used it for the setting of 
 his story as the only society in his experience, shows perhaps 
 that he knew the need of facts in this kind of novel, but the 
 result has not the desirable illusion of actuality. The only 
 part of the story that has quality occurs before the action be 
 gins; it is the description of the little college, of the kindly 
 president and his formidable spouse, a quiet picture in 
 which Hawthorne s magic realism is at least promised, and 
 much of his humor also. The paragraph summing up the 
 student body is still on the whole true of the small New Eng 
 land college; it is easy to recognize the country boy, in his 
 Freshman rusticity, and in the increased dignity and more 
 precise tailoring of Sophomore year, or the town-bred youths, 
 the " mod els of fashion to their rustic companions, over whom 
 they asserted a superiority in external accomplishments, which 
 the fresh though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest 
 denied them in their literary competitions." And equally true, 
 though more striking in discernment, considering his youth, 
 and marking already his distrust of the practical application 
 of ideals, is his description of the few young descendants of 
 the aborigines, "to whom an impracticable philanthropy was 
 endeavoring to impart the benefits of civilization." 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 193 
 
 The character of Dr. Welmoth, the college President, is the 
 only attractive one in the story; it is well described, but loses 
 dignity as soon as it is launched upon the impossible incidents 
 of the plot. Fanshawe, the hero, wins attention by the de 
 voted solitude of his life, and by his mental isolation even 
 when the plot compels him to mingle among others. When 
 he rejects the heroine s love and returns to the fatal studies 
 which are his doom, no matter how unreal the tale seems it 
 has this much of Hawthorne in it, that the character is kept 
 true to that curious isolation which was so much the fate of 
 himself and the chief persons in his books. 
 
 Though Fanshawe was in every sense a failure, it was a 
 long time before Hawthorne produced another story as am 
 bitious, or perhaps as promising. Like Cooper and Longfel 
 low, he was interested in native themes, and projected a series 
 to be called Provincial Tales, but the material for these 
 stories was either discarded or worked up in other forms. 
 Perhaps the anonymous tale, The Young Provincial, an ac 
 count of adventures in the battle of Bunker Hill, which ap 
 peared in The Token of 1830, is one of this series. Much of 
 Hawthorne s publishing for the next years was in this annual, 
 edited by S. G. Goodrich, of " Peter Parley" fame, or in other 
 similar gift books. In The Token appeared Roger Malvin s 
 Burial, The Gentle Boy for which thirty-five dollars were 
 paid and others of the well-known tales. Goodrich also 
 attempted to find a publisher for the Provincial Tales, and in 
 general was a good friend to the young writer, introducing 
 him to the editor of The New England Magazine, in which 
 his work afterward appeared. 
 
 It was always Hawthorne s habit to use his own experience 
 for the material of his writings, so that though little is said 
 specifically of these prentice years, a probably correct notion 
 of his industry and his discouragements can be gained from 
 The Devil In Manuscript, in which the speaker visits his 
 
194 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 friend, an author named "Oberon" one of Hawthorne s 
 pen-names and assists at the burning of unsuccessful manu 
 scripts. Many of Hawthorne s moods are in the sketch his 
 humor as well as his self-analysis. 
 
 " You cannot conceive," says Oberon, "what an effect the 
 composition of these tales has had on me. I have become 
 ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid reputation. I 
 am surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilder me, 
 by aping the realities of life. They have drawn me aside 
 from the beaten path of the world, and led me into a strange 
 sort of solitude, a solitude in the midst of men, where no 
 body wishes for what I do, nor thinks nor feels as I do. The 
 tales have done all this. 
 
 "They have been offered to some seventeen booksellers. 
 It would make you stare to read their answers. . . . One 
 man publishes nothing but school-books; another has five 
 novels already under examination. . . . Another gentleman 
 is just giving up business on purpose, I verily believe, to es 
 cape publishing my book. Several, however, would not ab 
 solutely decline the agency, on my advancing half the cost of 
 an edition, and giving bonds for the remainder, besides a 
 high percentage to themselves, whether the book sells or not. 
 
 "And then the various moods in which I wrote! Some 
 times my ideas were like precious stones under the earth, re 
 quiring toil to dig them up, and care to polish and brighten 
 them; but often a delicious stream of thought would gush out 
 before the page at once, like water sparkling up suddenly in 
 the desert; and when it had passed I gnawed my pen hope 
 lessly, or blundered on with cold and miserable toil, as if there 
 were a wall of ice between me and my subject. 
 
 "I find no traces of the golden pen with which I wrote in 
 characters of fire. My treasure of fairy coin is changed to 
 worthless dross. My picture, painted in what seemed the 
 loveliest hues, presents nothing but a faded and indistinguish 
 able surface. I have been eloquent and poetical and humor 
 ous in a dream, and behold ! it is all nonsense, now that I am 
 awake." 
 
 The sketch concludes with the setting fire of the chimney, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 195 
 
 in the process of burning the manuscripts, the incident al 
 ready referred to. The manuscript that Hawthorne actually 
 burned was the Seven Tales oj My Native Land, a series of 
 stories for which he could find no publisher. But in spite 
 of his shadowy life and his plentiful discouragements, his 
 stories were slowly making their way in the gift-book annuals 
 and magazines, and what is more important, he was develop 
 ing his remarkable style. What the Hawthorne-lover feels 
 most sharply in Fanshawe is the total absence of that mellow 
 charm of language which now seems but a natural echo of his 
 own name; the first book was written correctly, but with a 
 tedious flatness, unrelieved by any lift of phrase or sentence. 
 And this improvement of style seems not to have been won by 
 outward craft or calculation, as Poe would have us believe he 
 wrote, but rather by a more faithful transference of his own 
 moods into words, as though by long self-study he more 
 effectively grasped the subtler reliefs and contrasts of his ex 
 quisite nature, and with increased skill became more sincere. 
 His art is the same in any form of writing at any given time. 
 His letters and private journals have the same witchery, the 
 same finality, as his published work; so closely is the effect 
 bound up in his personality, that in his mature days his style 
 seems rather a portion of what he expressed, than a means of 
 expressing it. 
 
 An increasing mastery of so rare a gift could not fail, even 
 in Hawthorne s obscurity, to win some praise from readers of 
 finer judgment. Park Benjamin, reviewing The Token for 
 1836, singled out Hawthorne, as an English critic in the same 
 year also did, for special praise. The American editor spoke 
 of him as the "most pleasing writer of fanciful prose, except 
 Irving, in the country." Perhaps it was meager praise, after 
 five or six years of faithful work, but it had the accent of au 
 thority; evidently where he made his mark, he would make it 
 indelibly. 
 
196 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 In 1836 Goodrich got for him the editorship of The Ameri 
 can Magazine 0} Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, an un 
 important journal published in Boston. His salary was to be 
 five hundred dollars, which in view of his small earnings as a 
 story-writer seemed to him and his friends an assuring sum. 
 It turned out, however, that he had to write practically all of 
 the magazine, with some help from his older sister, and in 
 June the company failed, owing him part of his salary. He 
 blamed Goodrich at first, but fortunately did not quarrel 
 with so useful a friend; he and Elizabeth Hawthorne shortly 
 afterward wrote one of the Peter Parley books, the Universal 
 History on the Basis of Geography, the money for which he 
 gave to his sister, one hundred dollars. His name did not 
 appear on the title-page of this book, and though it had a 
 large circulation, it brought him no fame, nor was the money 
 he received in any proportion to its success. 
 
 His scattered stories continued to attract the attention of 
 a few discerning minds, but their anonymity seriously pre 
 vented him from making a reputation. It has been explained 
 that this secrecy was not entirely due to his modesty. It 
 would have injured the circulation of any annual to have 
 several of its articles obviously by the same writer, and for 
 this reason Hawthorne naturally fell into the habit of letting 
 his work go unclaimed, or signing it by pen-names, such as 
 "Oberon," and " Ashley Allen Roger." By 1836, however, 
 his stories were beginning to connect themselves with his real 
 name, which was announced with shrewd praise, probably by 
 Park Benjamin, in The American Monthly Magazine for Octo 
 ber of that year: 
 
 "The author of Sights from a Steeple, of The Gentle 
 Boy, and of The Wedding Knell, we believe to be one and 
 the same individual. The assertion may sound bold, yet we 
 hesitate not to call this author second to no man in this coun 
 try, except Washington Irving. . . . Yes, to us the style of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 197 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne is more pleasing, more fascinating, 
 than any one s except their dear Geoff ry Crayon ! This men 
 tion of the real name of our author may be reprobated by him. 
 His modesty is the best proof of his true excellence. How 
 different does such a man appear to us from one who anxiously 
 writes his name on every public post ! We have read a suffi 
 cient number of his pieces to make the reputation of a dozen 
 of our Yankee scribblers; and yet how few have heard the 
 name above written ! He does not even cover himself with the 
 same anonymous shield at all times; but liberally gives the 
 praise, which, concentrated on one, would be great, to several 
 unknowns. If Mr. Hawthorne would but collect his various 
 tales and essays into one volume, we can assure him that their 
 success would be brilliant certainly in England, perhaps in 
 this country." 
 
 That Hawthorne did finally collect into a volume the fruits 
 of his twelve years of seclusion, was due, though he did not 
 know it at the time, to his friend Bridge, whose service, as we 
 have seen, he afterwards acknowledged in the dedication of 
 The Snow Image. Bridge had kept in intimate touch with 
 his college friend, and was convinced that one reasonable 
 success would probably draw him out of his seclusion into 
 fame and the wholesome companionship of his fellows. He 
 therefore consulted with Goodrich, who undertook to get an 
 edition of a thousand copies published, if two hundred and 
 fifty dollars were guaranteed against the cost. Bridge guar 
 anteed that sum, without Hawthorne s knowledge, and 
 under the title of Twice Told Tales, a collection of previously 
 issued stories was published in Boston in 1837. A second 
 edition, with another volume of stories added, appeared in 
 1842; it was the first edition, however, that fairly started his 
 fame, and ended his long and curious apprenticeship. 
 
 At first the volume made little headway, but its hold on 
 the public extended without interruption. The American 
 Monthly Magazine praised the author again, with some 
 journalistic self -congratulation at having praised him before. 
 
198 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Another criticism hailed the book as typically American, a 
 true expression of New England. But the most generous and 
 intelligent praise came from Longfellow, whom Hawthorne 
 had known little in college and less since then, but who recog 
 nized in the new author an old classmate, and hastened to 
 say a characteristically kind word for his genius. Longfellow 
 already had his Harvard professorship, and his praise, in the 
 pages of the North American Review, carried as much weight 
 as any criticism. Hawthorne had sent him the book with a 
 modest reintroduction of himself to the poet s memory, 
 
 "We were not, it is true, so well acquainted at college that I 
 can plead an absolute right to inflict my twice-told tediousness 
 upon you; but I have often regretted that we were not better 
 known to each other, and have been glad of your success in 
 literature and in more important matters. . . . The pres 
 ent volumes contain such articles as seemed best worth of 
 fering to a public a second time; and I should like to flatter 
 myself that they would repay you some part of the pleasure 
 which I have derived from your own Outre-Mer. " 
 
 Longfellow s review, after pointing out in a somewhat exu 
 berant style the poetic attributes he finds in the newly-risen 
 star, especially the quality of the past in romance, proceeds to - 
 the cardinal merits of the stories, their truth to the New Eng 
 land past, and the exquisite style in which they are written. 
 His praise of the native themes was to be expected, since the 
 tide of Americanism was strong in his verse, but it is interest 
 ing to see that his bright spirit caught nothing of the dark 
 shadows of Hawthorne s Puritanism, although recognizing 
 with delight its picturesque charm for literary purposes: 
 
 "Who would not like to have been present at the court of the 
 worshipful Thomas Gorges, in those palmy days of the law 
 when Tom Heard was fined five shillings for being drunk, 
 and John Payne the same, for swearing one oath ? Who 
 would not like to have seen Thomas Taylor presented to the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 199 
 
 grand jury for abusing Captain Raynes, being in author 
 ity, by thee-ing and thou-ing him ; and John Wardell likewise, 
 for denying Cambridge College to be an ordinance of God; 
 and people fined for winking at comely damsels in church; 
 and others for being common sleepers there on the Lord s 
 Day ? Truly, many quaint and quiet customs, many comic 
 scenes and strange adventures, many wild and wondrous 
 things, fit for humorous tale and soft, pathetic story, lie all 
 about us here in New England." 
 
 The gratitude of Hawthorne s letter acknowledging this 
 praise has in it something pathetic; there were at least five 
 persons, he said, his mother, his two sisters, his aunt and 
 himself, who would thereafter believe Longfellow to be the 
 most sagacious critic on earth. Beneath the playful tone is the 
 consciousness of his isolation, which perhaps he felt most 
 keenly when this first applause called him into the general 
 world. The same consciousness is plainly expressed in a later 
 letter to Longfellow, giving an account of his life since gradua 
 tion, and laying a naturally exaggerated emphasis on the in 
 effectiveness of the twelve quiet years. His self-distrust and 
 his modesty count in the description: "By some witchcraft or 
 other for I really cannot assign any reasonable why and 
 wherefore I have been carried apart from the main current 
 of life, and find it impossible to get back again. Since we last 
 met, which you remember was in SawtelPs room, where you 
 read a farewell poem to the relics of the class, ever since 
 then I have secluded myself from society; and yet I never 
 meant any such thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was 
 going to lead. I have made a captive of myself, and put me 
 into a dungeon, and now I cannot find the key to let myself 
 out, and if the door were open, I should be almost afraid to 
 come out. You tell me that you have met with trouble and 
 changes. I know not what these may have been, but I can 
 assure you that trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, 
 and that there is no fate in this world so horrible as to have no 
 
200 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 share in either its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I 
 have not lived, but only dreamed of living." 
 
 This letter marks probably the lowest depths of Haw 
 thorne s seclusion and depression. While he was writing it 
 his fortune had changed, and though the brooding self- 
 analysis was to remain the chief trait of his nature, the record 
 of his later life shows that he took a busy, if a quiet, part in 
 daily affairs, and was a far less shadowy personage than he 
 himself and some of his critics have said. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Twice Told Tales, in the later complete edition, sum 
 up practically all sides of Hawthorne s genius, and in a way 
 supply the key to his longer works. One hesitates to call 
 them " short stories," lest the term should imply a definite 
 form or a limited subject ; for they range from dramatic scenes 
 of almost tragic intensity to cheerful essays in the vein of con 
 versation, suggesting usually a larger movement of thought, 
 especially in the tragic scenes, than the brief form can in 
 clude, and reproducing in the essays the apparent fugitive 
 moods and fancies of a dreamer, without any form at all. 
 This is not to deny for a moment the perfect grasp of theme 
 and economy of effect that result in the unity and purpose of a 
 work of art; it is only saying that these tales of Hawthorne s 
 are nearer to Irving s than to Poe s, belonging with the eight 
 eenth century essay rather than with the sharply focused, 
 well-economized short stories of the modern French artists. 
 The resemblance to the eighteenth century essay is stronger 
 because these tales, like Addison s papers, often seem to feel 
 their way out of the philosophizing mood into straightforward 
 narrative; they prophesy on the one side a development, 
 which Hawthorne reached in The Scarlet Letter, and on the 
 other hand they show the preponderance in his nature of the 
 analyzing, meditative faculty, for which the essay is the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 201 
 
 readiest medium, and which was to assert itself overwhelm-, 
 ingly in his later romances. 
 
 The dramatic scene is represented in the collection chiefly 
 by the stories of colonial legend, such as The Gray Champion, 
 which Hawthorne wisely placed first, Endicott and the Red 
 Cross, and Howe s Masquerade. In the first of these, as 
 Hawthorne s best critic has pointed out, he found a type of 
 story suited to his gifts, and by repeated use of it he brought 
 it to a peculiar perfection; so far as outward setting is con 
 cerned, it is the literary method in The Scarlet Letter. It is 
 an appeal to the eye, a brief and carefully prepared action, 
 and a final tableau. The mechanical setting, however, counts 
 with the reader far less than the sense of mystery conveyed in 
 most of the examples of this type; even when the source of the 
 mystery is explained away, as in Edward Randolph s Por 
 trait, the effect on the reader is unimpaired. The reason dis 
 closes the deep moral strain in Hawthorne s art; the mystery 
 he is interested in is never a thing of morbid nerves, of un 
 canny atmosphere, nor of mechanical device, as in the ro 
 mantic novelists from whom Brockden Brown derived, or in 
 Poe; it is always in normal life itself, as the story teaches the 
 reader to reflect upon it and weigh its significance. Whether 
 the Gray Champion is or is not one of the regicides, coming 
 opportunely from his hiding-place, is of less moment than the 
 mystery of truth driving tyranny back upon itself, of which he 
 is the parable, and which is emphasized by the linking of the 
 fights at Lexington and Bunker Hill with his spirit; whether 
 Edward Randolph s portrait of itself became visible to warn 
 Thomas Hutchinson of his soul s peril, or whether Alice Vane 
 renewed the old picture for a time by an Italian painter s 
 trick, is as nothing compared with the mysterious curse that 
 fell on Randolph, as he came to believe, for the blood shed by 
 his betrayal of a free country. 
 
 In some of the historical tales, however, particularly in 
 
202 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Endicott and the Red Cross, Hawthorne presents what is for 
 him a rare theme, the Puritan as a man of action. When he 
 puts aside for a moment the meditative character he is so 
 fitted to portray, and attempts the militant New Englander of 
 the first days, the effective portrait that results is probably an 
 exaggeration of fanaticism, a character, as has been noticed, 
 nearer the Covenanter than the New England Puritan, and 
 perhaps derived from Scott. In his defiance of a tyrannical 
 church and king Endicott is clothed in an ideal of courageous 
 patriotism, and he has the reader s approval as well as Haw 
 thorne s in the closing words: "Forever honored be the name 
 of Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and 
 recognize in the rending of the Red Cross from New Eng 
 land s banner the first omen of that deliverance which our 
 fathers consummated after the bones of the stern Puritan had 
 lain more than a century in the dust." But Endicott s real 
 sternness, the Covenanter quality that Hawthorne is inclined 
 to ascribe to his Puritan men of action, is displayed more ef 
 fectively, with little to justify its force, in The Maypole of 
 Merry Mount. Few of Hawthorne s tableaux hold a place 
 longer in the memory than the picture of the hard captain 
 face to face with the Lord and Lady of the May, types of 
 two ideals of life, which in their irreconcilable conflict had 
 haunted the English imagination for centuries. The meeting 
 is too momentous for even Endicott to escape its influence; 
 the narrowness of his imagination is emphasized by the very 
 pity he can hardly conceal : 
 
 "The youth, in the peril of the moment, had dropped his 
 gilded staff, and thrown his arm about the Lady of the May, 
 who leaned against his breast, too lightly to burden him, but 
 with weight enough to express that their destinies were linked 
 together, for good or evil. They looked first at each other, 
 and then into the grim captain s face. There they stood, in 
 the first hour of wedlock, while the idle pleasures, of which 
 their companions were the emblems, had given place to the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 203 
 
 sternest cares of life, personified by the dark Puritans. But 
 never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high as 
 when its glow was chastened by adversity. 
 
 " l Youth, said Endicott, ye stand in an evil case, thou 
 and thy maiden wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded 
 that ye shall both have a token to remember your wedding 
 day! 
 
 " Stern man, 5 cried the May Lord, how can I move thee? 
 Were the means at hand, I would resist to the death. Being 
 powerless, I entreat. Do with me as thou wilt, but let Edith 
 go untouched! 
 
 " Not so, replied the immitigable zealot, We are not 
 wont to show an idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the 
 stricter discipline. What sayest thou, maid ? Shall thy silken 
 bridegroom suffer thy share of the penalty, besides his own ? 
 
 " Be it death, said Edith, and lay it all on me! 
 
 "Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a 
 woeful case. Their foes were triumphant, their friends cap 
 tive and abased, their home desolate, the benighted wilder 
 ness around them, and a rigorous destiny, in the shape of the 
 Puritan leader, their only guide. Yet the deepening twilight 
 could not altogether conceal that the iron man was softened ; 
 he smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; he almost sighed 
 for the inevitable blight of early hopes. 
 
 " The troubles of life have come hastily upon this young 
 couple, observed Endicott. We will see how they comfort 
 themselves under their present trials ere we burden them with 
 greater. 
 
 In all the dramatic scenes dealing with history Hawthorne 
 selects for treatment a critical moment of change, when a new 
 era asserts itself perceptibly over an enfeebled past. He has 
 no interest in action, beyond such economical limits as may 
 show forth character, and for history as an evolution he cares 
 little; he sees life in its instant of fatal choice, much as Brown 
 ing sees it, and the choice is usually strongly influenced by the 
 past, so that it appears the work of destiny. But Hawthorne 
 also clothes the past with a peculiar moral value; he fre 
 quently personifies it, so that it enters the scene, at the dra- 
 
204 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 matic crises, to establish long-delayed justice or to point a 
 warning. This is the mission of the Gray Champion, of 
 Edward Randolph s portrait, and of the phantom procession 
 in Howe s Masquerade. The vitality of the past in this type 
 of story is as significant as the promise of the new age, and 
 bears the peculiar mark of Hawthorne s reflective tempera 
 ment. 
 
 In none of his stories does Hawthorne seem so committed 
 in his sympathies as in these historical scenes. Yet even in 
 the most vigorous of them some part of his nature remains 
 stubbornly and critically aloof, observing with exact justice 
 the flaws in what he admires. Unlike Mrs. Stowe, Hawthorne 
 could advocate nothing; he holds no brief for any man nor 
 any life, nor altogether for any single deed; nor even for hu 
 man nature at large. The many aspects of truth, weighed in 
 his careful thought, induce humor or irony, but lead to no 
 final judgment. While he honors Endicott for asserting hu 
 man liberty, he is scrupulous to portray those elements in the 
 scene that indicate the Puritan use of freedom, the whipping 
 post, the pillory and the stock; the Episcopalian and the sus 
 pected Catholic confined by the head, and the man who had 
 drunk a health to the king, confined by the legs; the " Wanton 
 Gospeller," who had dared to put an original interpretation 
 upon Holy Writ, and the woman with a cleft stick on her 
 tongue, who had wagged that unruly member against the 
 elders of the church. The irony of Hawthorne s picture is 
 admirable, yet for fear his humor may seem to make a dis 
 tinction between the inconsistencies of one age and another, 
 he makes haste to insert the characteristic warning : 
 
 "Let not the reader argue, from any of these evidences of 
 iniquity, that the times of the Puritans were more vicious 
 than our own, when, as we pass along the very street of this 
 sketch, we discern no badge of infamy on man or woman. 
 It was the policy of our ancestors to search out even the most 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 205 
 
 secret sins, and expose them to shame, without fear or favor, 
 in the broadest light of the noonday sun. Were such the cus 
 tom now, perchance we might find materials for a no less 
 piquant sketch than the above." 
 
 This, it should be remembered, is in the story that records 
 Endicott s heroic blow for liberty. The ironical paradox of 
 the scene is clear enough. If we needed further proof of 
 Hawthorne s unwillingness to take sides or pass judgment, 
 what seems his most un-Puritan trait, we might find it in 
 these other words, evidently his own, from the Journal o] an 
 African Cruiser, which he edited for his friend Bridge in 
 1845 : " It is remarkable that Defoe, a man of the most severe 
 and delicate conscience, should have made his hero a slave- 
 dealer, and should display a perfect insensibility to anything 
 culpable in the traffic. Morality has taken a great step in ad 
 vance since that day, or, at least, it has thrown a strong light 
 upon one spot, with perhaps a corresponding shadow upon 
 some other. The next age may shift the illumination, and 
 show us sins as great as that of the slave trade, but which now 
 enter into the daily practice of men claiming to be just and 
 wise." 
 
 In strong contrast to the dramatic scenes in Twice Told 
 Tales are the sketches of the essay type, full of gentle wisdom 
 and keen observation, of which A Rill from the Town Pump is 
 perhaps the best-known example. In this kind of writing 
 Hawthorne uses the most meager materials; all he needs is 
 some one place or object for his meditations to center about, 
 and with this simple unity he can dispense with any other 
 structure. None of his work seems more natural than these 
 essay-sketches, probably because they represent with little 
 change the way his mind took hold of life. The commonest 
 object would suggest to him the experiences it was open to, 
 and his speculations would explore its history or its use in 
 search of simple parables. David Swan, The Toll-Gatherer s 
 
206 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Day, Sights from a Steeple and Sunday at Home, all are varia 
 tions of the type; from a fixed point the reader is made to feel 
 the normal movement of life as it touches that point, and to 
 discern its humble lessons. It is characteristic of Hawthorne 
 that the attitude assumed is always passive; life as it molds 
 the soul is his theme, and the element of fate is as strong in the 
 various accidents here reckoned with, as is the sense of the 
 past in the dramatic sketches. It is equally characteristic of 
 Hawthorne, however, and it should not be forgotten, that in 
 these essays the temper is beautifully sane and cheerful. 
 They have nothing of the morbid shadow which attaches it 
 self, in other portions of his work, to his preoccupation with 
 the problem of sin, and which too often is remembered as the 
 sole atmosphere of his art. These quiet, happy essays, full 
 of village wisdom, rich though limited, and slightly elevated, 
 if at all, above the pitch of thoughtful conversation, are in 
 prose the counterpart of Longfellow s more popular poems, 
 and appeal to the same taste. If it has been the custom in 
 our time to think lightly of Longfellow s transparent melo 
 dies, it is not surprising that these equally obvious prose medi 
 tations should seem somewhat infantile. But the apprecia 
 tive reader knows the rarity of this clear atmosphere, in both 
 prose and verse; it has never been duplicated in its original 
 purity of thought and word; it seems a blossoming in art of 
 the more delicate celestial strains of the Puritan temper, with 
 neither its overdeveloped conscience nor its will to be accom 
 plishing. With all the strong moral contrasts with which 
 these essay-tales abound, Hawthorne troubles himself little 
 in them to arrive at any conclusion; sometimes he sees several 
 conclusions, all contradictory. Whether David Swan would 
 have been better or worse off had be waked to meet any of the 
 intruders upon his nap, is not determined in Hawthorne s 
 mind; if the reader passes at first a hasty judgment, in his 
 sympathy with the pretty girl and his dislike of the thieves. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 207 
 
 he may catch some of the author s prudence, and reconsider; 
 and if he makes any final deduction, it will be a cheerful rev 
 erence for fate. Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy 
 footsteps of the strange things that almost happen. Does it 
 not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless 
 and unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart 
 our path, there should still be regularity enough in mortal 
 life to render foresight even partially available?" 
 
 Hawthorne s genius takes a third form in these tales in the 
 studies of psychological experience, or homely allegory, such 
 as Wakefield or Dr. Heidegger s Experiment. Perhaps stories 
 in many ways so different should hardly be classed together; 
 they have a common trait, however, in the deep philosophical 
 interest which they seem to play upon and half express. In 
 the more psychological sketches Hawthorne is apparently 
 fascinated by the power of a chance resolve, or what seems a 
 chance resolve, to shape a man s life; so Wakefield in the 
 spirit of his strange joke takes up his residence in the street 
 next his home, and finding it daily more difficult to go back, 
 becomes almost permanently exiled. The moral is plain 
 enough, and Hawthorne states it more plainly still in several 
 places: "Amid the seeming confusion," he says, "of our 
 mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a 
 system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by 
 stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a 
 fearful risk of losing his place forever." This is simply to say, 
 what Hawthorne was destined to say many times again, with 
 varied emphasis but unchanged conviction, that a man s life 
 is compelled in one direction or another by an increasingly 
 absolute fate, made up of his own acts. "Would that I had a 
 folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen pages! Then 
 might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays 
 its strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves its 
 consequences into an iron tissue of necessity." 
 
208 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 This fatalistic bent belongs to Hawthorne s nature; it be 
 longs also to the scientific temper, and it shows chiefly in 
 those stories which are semi-scientific in their psychological 
 subject-matter or treatment. It has been thought by most of 
 Hawthorne s biographers that his theory of the fatality of acts 
 was founded largely upon a tragic experience of his own life. 
 In the belief that a young lady, whom he knew well, had been 
 insulted, he challenged the supposed offender to a duel, but 
 was prevented from carrying out his purpose by his friends 
 Pierce and Cilley, who showed him that the supposed insult 
 was entirely mythical. A few years later Cilley was himself 
 challenged by a political enemy, and the fact that Hawthorne 
 had been willing to fight a duel is said to have persuaded him 
 not to decline; and his opponent killed him. But whether or 
 not this account be true, and whether Hawthorne brooded 
 over his share in his friend s death, Wake field was published 
 before Cilley was killed, and the fatalism there expressed 
 came from the author s temperament, not from his experi 
 ence. 
 
 The same sense of fate is in the homely allegories, and their 
 moral vein is no less strong, but Hawthorne uses them chiefly 
 to point the significant coincidences and contrasts of daily 
 life. Dr. Heidegger s Experiment teaches as a general moral 
 the uselessness of avoiding the natural lot; to be young again 
 after many years proves no advantage to the Widow Wych- 
 erly. But Hawthorne interests us also in the incongruous 
 mirth that comes with artificial youth to the old people; 
 "They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide- 
 skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the 
 ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped 
 across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of 
 spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the 
 black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated him 
 self in an armchair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 209 
 
 of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped 
 about the room." As a kind of parallel to this uncanny res 
 toration, Hawthorne describes the recovered beauty of the 
 dried rose the Doctor has cherished for half a century; it rein 
 forces the sense of fate, for its fading comes without any fault 
 of its own; unlike the human characters, it has not brought 
 age upon itself a second time by thoughtless or undignified 
 conduct. 
 
 These first stories of Hawthorne s, with their threefold in 
 terest in the dramatic side of history, in the reflective wis 
 dom of every-day life, such as makes the material of the fa 
 miliar essay, and in the psychological or allegorical situa 
 tion, give in outline the qualities and limitations of his 
 genius, which his later books simply expand and illustrate. 
 In these brief tales and sketches he comes directly into com 
 parison with Irving and Poe, the other masters of the short 
 story in American literature. The Addisonian influence in 
 both Irving and Hawthorne makes certain resemblances be 
 tween them quite natural; Poe, in his essay on Hawthorne s 
 Tales, repeatedly marks the likeness; "The Spectator, Mr. 
 Irving, and Hawthorne have in common," he says, "that 
 tranquil and subdued manner which I have chosen to denom 
 inate repose; 11 and in another place, "the natural" in com 
 position, he says, "is best exemplified, among English writers, 
 in Addison, Irving, and Hawthorne." In the essay type of 
 sketch, where he deals with a limited life, illuminating it by 
 wise reflection and humor, Hawthorne is nearest the New 
 York writer; they are alike, also, in a certain lack of energy in 
 their grip of the story a tendency to play with it for which 
 Hawthorne has been severely criticized. The emotional ap 
 peal that has made Rip Van Winkle beloved of American 
 playgoers, is largely due to the familiar stage-version and to 
 Mr. Jefferson s acting; Irving s story is pale and slight in com 
 parison. And the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, though more 
 
2io LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 richly varied in human character and stronger in plot, is yet a 
 fanciful tale, and belongs among the most fragile creations of 
 poetry. The- humorous interest in character as it shows it 
 self in homely encounters, the parochial curiosity, delight 
 fully caught in the episode of The Stout Gentleman, in Brace- 
 bridge Hall, is of the very fabric of Hawthorne s genius in 
 its lighter moments. Yet the resemblances between the two 
 stylistic masters of American prose need not seem to weigh 
 heavily against their large differences. In the very lightness 
 of touch, the trifling moment in which they seem to find 
 common ground, they are totally unlike, as one hardly needs 
 to point out; Irving s manner suggests great riches of experi 
 ence and a wide culture, borne without consciousness, and 
 enjoyed without more reflection than is needed for storing 
 away such comfortable wisdom; Hawthorne s lightness in 
 evitably suggests shadows withdrawn for the moment only 
 his nature, for once relaxed into playfulness, is at once nar 
 rower and deeper than Irving s, and sunlight in it is a sur 
 prise. More than any other of our prose writers, Irving is 
 simply a man of letters; his interest is in life as it lends itself to 
 happy memories and literary record; he is neither a political 
 theorist like Cooper, nor a propounder and experimenter of 
 esthetic theory, like Poe, nor a moral psychologist like Haw 
 thorne. In a sense he is even more occupied with the past 
 than Hawthorne, for out of the past his temper rescues no 
 light for the future, no destiny for the race, but only the charm 
 and flavor of age, of ancient cheerful customs and old wine. 
 His genius lent itself to no exploring, except backwards into 
 the golden world of books and bookish tradition; though he 
 made the attempt, he could not grapple with the new frontier 
 world of Cooper, nor would he even attempt the spiritual ex 
 ploration in which Hawthorne is most himself. For that rea 
 son, perhaps, Irving s great gifts and beautiful nature seem to 
 have been left behind in the movement of American literature; 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 211 
 
 he is still beloved, but he takes his place in the memory among 
 English writers, as though he belonged to the old country, so 
 much of whose charm as a literary shrine he discovered for the 
 English-speaking race. 
 
 It is with Edgar Allan Poe, however, that Hawthorne is 
 most often and most naturally compared. They two have 
 practised the writing of the short story in America with a 
 mastery still unapproached ; and both are notable, in the popu 
 lar opinion, for a dark strain in their art, a morbid temper 
 ament which singularly joins their fame. In mere technic, the 
 management of incident, the description of scene, and most of 
 all in a perfect unity of tone, which gives to their masterpieces 
 a remarkable effect of completeness, they readily stand com 
 parison with each other, and in deeper ways they suggest sim 
 ilarities. Most obvious of their common traits is their pre 
 occupation with wickedness and death, with that sort of 
 concealed sin especially that produces mental horror in the 
 reader; to the uncritical reader The Black Cat, William Wil 
 son, The Cask of Amontillado, and Ligeia, the first titles that 
 come to mind, have a strong affinity to The Minister s Black 
 Veil, The Wedding Knell, or, to anticipate in Hawthorne s 
 work, Rappaccini s Daughter and Ethan Brand. In only one 
 respect, however, are these writers alike; they are both masters 
 of artistic "keeping"; they both have control of the single 
 mood or color or plot at will, so that The Fall of the House 0} 
 Usher is a unit of atmosphere, The Masque of the Red Death 
 a unit of color, Rappaccini s Daughter a unit of idea. But this 
 is only to say that both writers are masters of the short story. 
 In other respects they are strikingly individual. Poe is unap 
 proached in the intellectual vigor of many of his plots; Haw 
 thorne is as unique in American literature for style, in the 
 deepest sense. With Poe the motive of his art is essentially 
 intellectual, and therefore he appears to work from without; 
 Hawthorne s genius is the flowering of New England char- 
 
212 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 acter, and character is always his subject, and therefore his 
 art appears to work from within. He studies the experiences 
 of the soul for their effect upon the soul s destiny; Poe studies 
 all incidents in their own world, for their own sake, with re 
 gard to their scientific or artistic relation to each other, not 
 to the soul, and his highest interest is not spiritual but psycho 
 logical. 
 
 It is doubtless unwise to believe Poe s account of his own 
 mental processes. No poet, probably, could have accom 
 plished by purely intellectual methods so emotional a master 
 piece as The Raven. The intuition of the artist, which gets 
 so little credit in Poe s self-analysis, must have been his in 
 superb measure. Yet it must be conceded that his main pre 
 occupation, outside of the poems and the few great romances 
 already mentioned, is with reason rather than emotion or 
 character, and his criticisms of other writing than his own are 
 founded on purely intellectual appreciations. His essential 
 separation from Hawthorne s spirit is written in every line of 
 the essay on his great contemporary s Tales. The manage 
 ment of allegory, the successful keeping of tone, the finely 
 restrained manner, and the ordinary working up of plot 
 these engaged Poe s attention; but with the deeper meaning, . 
 what he calls the " mysticism," he is curiously out of tune. 
 He digresses characteristically to show that Hawthorne had 
 plagiarized from William Wilson in Howe s Masquerade. 
 Considering the different temperaments of the writers, we 
 are not surprised that Poe overlooks the distinction between 
 his own conception of a haunting double, and Hawthorne s 
 phantom pageant, with its twofold mystery of the past and the 
 future. Yet it is certainly remarkable that Poe should attempt 
 to establish the supposed plagiarism, not in the likeness of 
 plot or situation, but in fancied resemblances of language, 
 which must be italicized to be noticed. The whole essay, and 
 particularly this passage, significant for all it is blind to, or 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 213 
 
 intentionally fails to mention, in Hawthorne s work, serves as 
 an easy measure of difference in the nature and art of the two 
 men. 
 
 Most characteristically, however, Hawthorne and Poe 
 differ in the treatment of evil. The readiest way to a distinc 
 tion is to say that Hawthorne deals with sin, and Poe with 
 crime. The actual deed monopolizes Poe s attention; or if he 
 studies its consequences, as in The Black Cat, it is only so far 
 as they lead to other outward deeds, all linked together in a 
 logical fate, but apart from the soul. Whatever horror be 
 longs with such tales Poe depicts with great power, as in 
 this story or in The Cask o) Amontillado; but the horror is 
 treated as an artistic effect, studied lovingly for its own sake; 
 it is physical, and springs from no fundamental sense of right 
 or wrong. The victim in The Cask of Amontillado does 
 not deserve his fate; the murderer in The Black Cat does de 
 serve his; yet the horror of the first story is without pity, and 
 in the second it is without approval of the doomed man s fate. 
 Poe s art is in the highest sense literary. It derives from the 
 Gothic tales of terror, and is nourished by esthetic and ner 
 vous rather than by moral experiences. On the other hand, it 
 need hardly be stated again that Hawthorne s art is a natural 
 expression of a deep nature brooding upon the enigma of 
 character and its relation to evil the fit problem for a son of 
 the Puritans; and his art takes on beauty, not by forethought, 
 but out of the sources of his own loving nature. How far 
 he departed temperamentally from Poe s unmoral interest in 
 crime as a literary asset, is witnessed by Poe s ignoring of the 
 theme in Hawthorne s work, as though unaware that their 
 paths even appeared to cross in the study of evil. He pro 
 nounced rashly that Hawthorne s genius lay entirely in the 
 bright, Addisonian sketches of cheerful village life, and shut 
 his eyes to the strange power that was to create The Scarlet 
 Letter and The Marble Faun. 
 
214 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 V 
 
 After the publication of Twice Told Tales Hawthorne s 
 life continued for a while unchanged. He wrote more stories 
 and lived quietly at home, though his friends cast about to 
 find occupation for him that would bring more immediate 
 fame and profit. It belonged to the charm of his character to 
 arouse such loyal interest in those who penetrated his seclu 
 sion, and few artists have been served by their friends with 
 more kindness and wisdom than Hawthorne. His life 
 changed decisively, however, not through their efforts, but 
 through his acquaintance with Sophia Peabody, with whom 
 he fell in love, and who became his wife. The Peabodys, once 
 neighbors of the Hawthornes in his childhood, had lost sight 
 of the family during Mrs. Hawthorne s residence in Maine. 
 After the appearance of Twice Told Tales, Elizabeth Pea- 
 body recognized in the author a childhood acquaintance, and 
 reopened the intercourse of the two households. She herself 
 was a woman of intellect and character, still remembered for 
 her work in education; her sister Mary was to be the wife of 
 Horace Mann; Sophia, the youngest, was an artist, a person 
 of strong enthusiasms and delicate sensitiveness, altogether as 
 rare a being as Hawthorne ever conceived in his stories, and 
 the severe headaches that had made her practically an invalid 
 for twenty years, though they left her fragile, had diminished 
 nothing of the sweetness of her character. 
 
 It was in 1838 that Hawthorne and his sisters first called on 
 the neighboring family. The meeting of Hawthorne and his 
 future wife has been described by Elizabeth Peabody. 
 
 "I was alone in the drawing-room; but Sophia, who was 
 still an invalid, was in her chamber. As soon as I could, I ran 
 upstairs to her and said, O Sophia, you must get up and 
 dress and come down! The Hawthornes are here, and you 
 never saw anything so splendid as he is he is handsomer 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 215 
 
 than Lord Byron! She laughed, but refused to come, re 
 marking that since he had called once, he would call again. 
 
 " He did call again, as Sophia had predicted, not long after 
 wards; and this time she came down, in her simple white 
 wrapper, and sat on the sofa. As I said My sister, Sophia, 
 he rose and looked at her intently, he did not realize how 
 intently. As we went on talking, she would frequently inter 
 pose a remark, in her low, sweet voice. Every time she did 
 so, he would look at her again, with the same piercing, in- 
 drawing gaze. I was struck with it, and thought, What if he 
 should fall in love with her! and the thought troubled me; 
 for she had often told me that nothing would ever tempt her 
 to marry, and inflict on a husband the care of an invalid." 
 
 In the course of the friendship that sprang up between the 
 Peabodys and the Hawthornes much characteristic light is 
 thrown upon both families. Hawthorne for some time was 
 far more the friend than the lover, and in spite of Elizabeth 
 Peabody s premonition no one seems to have suspected the 
 attachment that was gathering force unless it was Elizabeth 
 Hawthorne, who perhaps showed her interest in the matter 
 when she appropriated the flowers Elizabeth Peabody had 
 sent to her brother, saying that they would be unworthily 
 bestowed upon him, "who professes to regard the love of 
 flowers as a feminine taste. So I permitted him to look at 
 them, but considered them a gift to myself." 
 
 Hawthorne showed his realization of his love by a deter 
 mined effort to make an immediate place for himself in the 
 world. The dream-life that had been his, suddenly paled, 
 and he was ready to do anything practical that might give 
 him the prospect he now needed. He was secretly engaged to 
 Sophia Peabody, his own mother not being told, for fear the 
 shock of the news might prove disastrous to her. The mar 
 riage must have seemed far away to both the lovers, for 
 Sophia had engaged herself on condition that she recovered 
 from her invalidism a condition that bade fair to be insur- 
 
216 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 mountable; and of course Hawthorne had to find means to 
 support her. Such means seemed at hand, however, in the 
 appointment as weigher and gauger in the Boston Custom 
 house, where George Bancroft, the historian, was collector 
 of the port. So Hawthorne left the little room in the old 
 house, in which he had won his first share of fame, and took 
 up his new and comparatively humble duties in January, 
 1839. 
 
 The entries in his journal give a clear record of those duties, 
 all of which he performed conscientiously; they also give evi 
 dence that these rough experiences were stored in his memory 
 as precious points of contact with real life. In a letter to 
 Longfellow soon after the appointment Hawthorne wrote 
 jocularly of the literary use to which he might turn his new 
 career, and the journal is a more serious witness to the minute 
 attention he gave to every human interest in the routine of his 
 work. While he was literally toiling, getting down to the 
 wharf each day before the workmen, so that their working 
 hours, by which they were paid, might be as long as possible, 
 he was also, as he realized, disciplining his dreamer s soul to 
 actual things the best, unconscious preparation for such 
 writing as The Scarlet Letter. Just what his life was, or a 
 large daily part of it, is told in the entry for February 7, 
 1839.- 
 
 " Yesterday and day before, measuring a load of coal from 
 the schooner Thomas Lowder, of St. John s, N. B. A little, 
 black, dirty vessel. The coal stowed in the hold, so as to fill 
 the schooner full, and make her a solid mass of black ma 
 terial. The master, Best, a likely young man; his mate a 
 fellow jabbering in some strange gibberish, English I be 
 lieve or nearer that than anything else but gushing out all 
 together whole sentences confounded into one long, unin 
 telligible word. Irishmen shovelling the coal into the two 
 Custom-house tubs, to be craned out of the hold, and others 
 wheeling it away in barrows, to be laden into wagons. The 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 217 
 
 first day, I walked the wharf, suffering not a little from cold; 
 yesterday, I sat in the cabin, whence I could look through 
 the interstices of the bulkhead, or whatever they call it, into 
 the hold. My eyes, what a cabin! Three paces would more 
 than measure it in any direction, and it was filled with barrels, 
 not clean and new, but black, and containing probably the 
 provender of the vessel; jugs, firkins, the cook s utensils and 
 kitchen furniture everything grimy and sable with coal dust. 
 There were two or three tiers of berths; and the blankets, etc., 
 are not to be thought of. A cooking stove, wherein was burn 
 ing some of the coal excellent fuel, burning as freely as 
 wood, and without the bituminous melting of Newcastle coal. 
 The cook of the vessel, a grimy, unshaven, middle-aged man, 
 trimming the fire at need, and sometimes washing his dishes 
 in water that seemed to have cleansed the whole world be 
 forehand the draining of gutters, or caught at sink-spouts. 
 In the cessations of labor, the Irishmen in the hold would 
 poke their heads through the open space into the cabin and 
 call Cook! for a drink of water or a pipe whereupon 
 Cook would fill a short black pipe, put a coal into it, and stick 
 it into the Irishman s mouth. Here sat I on a bench before 
 the fire, the other guests of the cabin being the stevedore, who 
 takes the job of getting the coal ashore, and the owner of the 
 horse that raised the tackle the horse being driven by a boy. 
 The cabin was lined with slabs the rudest and dirtiest hole 
 imaginable, yet the passengers had been accommodated here 
 in the trip from New Brunswick. The bitter zero atmosphere 
 came down the companion-way, and threw its chill over me 
 sometimes, but I was pretty comfortable, though, on reaching 
 home, I found that I had swaggered through several thronged 
 streets with coal streaks on my visage. 
 
 "The wharfinger s office is a general resort and refuge for 
 people who have business to do on the wharf, in the spaces 
 before work is commenced, between the hours of one and two, 
 etc. A salamander stove a table of the signals, wharves, 
 and agent of packets plying to and from Boston a snuff 
 box a few chairs, etc., constituting the furniture. A news 
 paper." 
 
 For a while Hawthorne s genius gathered strength, Antaeus- 
 
218 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 like, from this sordid contact; then tlie severe restraint be 
 came irksome. Throughout his life all attempts to deal closely 
 with actual, routine things ended in a discontent of the spirit 
 which had no relation to indolence, but simply proved to what 
 realm he was native. His own words, from which the best 
 accounts of the next years must be taken, show the stages of 
 this discontent. The first note is sounded on July 3, 1839. 
 
 "I do not mean to imply that I am unhappy or discontented, 
 for this is not the case. My life is only a burden in the same 
 way that it is to every toilsome man; and mine is a healthy 
 weariness, such as needs only a night s sleep to remove it. 
 But from henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sons 
 of toil my brothers, and shall know how to sympathize with 
 them, seeing that I likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne 
 the fervor of the midday sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps 
 homeward till eventide. Years hence, perhaps, the experi 
 ence that my heart is acquiring now will flow out in truth and 
 wisdom." 
 
 By the following February the discontent becomes more 
 apparent. 
 
 " All day long again have I been engaged in a very black 
 business, as black as a coal; and, though my face and 
 hands have undergone a thorough purification, I feel not al 
 together fit to hold communion with doves. Methinks my 
 profession is somewhat akin to that of a chimney-sweeper; 
 but the latter has the advantage over me, because, after climb 
 ing up through the darksome flue of the chimney, he merges 
 into the midst of the golden air, and sings out his melodies far 
 over the heads of the whole tribe of weary earth-plodders." 
 
 A month later Hawthorne speaks for a moment of the com 
 pensation for his weary toil. 
 
 "It is good for me, on many accounts, that my life has had 
 this passage in it. I know much more than I did a year ago. 
 [ have a stronger sense of power to act as a man among men. 
 I have gained worldly wisdom, and wisdom also that is not al- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 219 
 
 together of this world. And, when I quit this earthly cavern 
 where I am now buried, nothing will cling to me that ought to 
 be left behind. Men will not perceive, I trust, by my look, or 
 the tenor of my thoughts and feelings, that I have been a 
 custom-house officer." 
 
 And still later, when his duties took him to the cleaner 
 work of inspecting the salt vessels, he writes, 
 
 " Rejoice with me, for I am free from a load of coal which 
 has been pressing upon my shoulders throughout all the hot 
 weather. I am convinced that Christian s burden consisted 
 of coal; and no wonder he felt so relieved, when it fell off and 
 rolled into the sepulchre. His load, however, at the utmost, 
 could not have been more than a few bushels, whereas mine 
 was exactly one hundred and thirty-five chaldrons and seven 
 tubs." 
 
 Hawthorne s work in the Boston Custom-house ended in 
 April, 1841, with a change of political administration. In 
 1840, after the death of their brother George, for some time 
 an invalid, the Peabodys had moved to Boston, and the lovers 
 saw much of each other; however impatient he must have 
 been and wearied of his office, Hawthorne could not have been 
 unhappy during this period. Apparently he had expected to 
 save some leisure each day for writing, but the routine of his 
 tasks left him inspiration for little besides the notes and 
 sketches in his journal. Had he stayed longer in this en 
 vironment, perhaps he would have found his voice again; as 
 it was, his genius was chiefly occupied in absorbing and as 
 similating the materials of his novel experiences. Exception 
 must be made, however, of three books for children, published 
 between November, 1840, and February, 1841, and written 
 it has been suggested under the influence of Elizabeth Pea- 
 body, who had started a book-store. The three volumes, 
 Grandfather s Chair, Famous Old People and Liberty Tree, 
 are a series of historical tales of early New England, admirably 
 
220 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 written, with an obvious educational purpose. Hawthorne s 
 long acquaintance with the New England past must have 
 made this writing a simple task, but its purpose naturally 
 prevented him from developing the material in characteristi 
 cally subtle ways. Yet if little of his genius finds important 
 expression here, it should be remembered that these books, 
 like the later reworking of the Greek myths, expressed his 
 interest in children, no negligible part of his nature. 
 
 Upon losing his position in the Custom-house, Hawthorne 
 joined the Brook Farm movement, apparently with the hope 
 that it might provide a home eventually for himself and his 
 betrothed. It has never been thought that he entered the 
 community through any deep sympathy with its aims; his 
 spirit never kindled in any social cause, nor any reform. The 
 community idea had, indeed, long appealed to him, he had 
 been interested in the Shakers, had half whimsically thought 
 of joining them, and had used the community as a theme in 
 his writing. But there is little doubt that he joined the move 
 ment now as a practical, and in that sense selfish, experiment. 
 From his salary in the Custom-house he had saved a thou 
 sand dollars; he invested the whole sum in the new transcen 
 dental enterprise, and took his place in the Brook Farm circle 
 early in April, 1841. 
 
 "The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Educa 
 tion," at Roxbury, Massachusetts, had its origin in the circle 
 of the Boston Transcendentalists. George Ripley and W. H. 
 Channing were apparently the prime movers in the scheme 
 to establish an ideal society, where the earthly distractions of 
 life should be reduced to their proper minimum, and the soul 
 left free to expand in the new philosophy. Emerson and the 
 older Transcendentalists discouraged the attempt, but Ripley 
 persisted, and early in 1841 bought a milk farm in West Rox 
 bury, and organized the proposed community into a stock 
 company. At first fifty thousand dollars was the capitaliza- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 221 
 
 tion spoken of; then thirty thousand; and finally twenty-four 
 shares, of five hundred dollars each, were taken. The farm, 
 one hundred and seventy acres in extent, cost ten thousand 
 five hundred dollars, and it was immediately mortgaged for 
 six thousand dollars. The financing of the enterprise was 
 somewhat elaborate, and when considered in all its details, 
 appears perplexingly impractical. The humor of the com 
 munity s history begins with the first election of officers, when 
 Hawthorne, who had invested his savings in two shares, 
 was made a member of the Direction of Finance"; per 
 haps the humor began earlier, in the selection, for agricul 
 tural purposes, of land obviously worn out and fit only for 
 pasture. 
 
 The Transcendentalists rarely understated their ideals. 
 The aim of Brook Farm was "to insure a more natural union 
 between intellectual and manual labor than now exists; to 
 combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the 
 same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by 
 providing all with labor adapted to their tastes and talents, 
 and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away 
 with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits 
 of education and the profits of labor to all; and thus to prepare 
 a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose 
 relations with each other would permit a more wholesome and 
 simple life than can be led amidst the pressure of our com 
 petitive institutions." But smile as one will, this strange ex 
 periment is remembered as an incident in enough famous 
 lives, here meeting in "The House of the Interpreter," "The 
 Pilgrim House," and the other simple buildings with fine 
 nameSj to insure the immortality of Brook Farm in American 
 history. Hither came Margaret Fuller, and Charles Dana, 
 founder of the New York Sun, and George William Curtis 
 perhaps the most lovable of the community; and less enthusi 
 astic, but destined to higher fame, came Hawthorne. 
 
222 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 One turns to his note-books, as usual, for the indelible 
 sketches of his daily life. 
 
 "Here I am," he writes, "in a polar Paradise! I know not 
 how to interpret this aspect of nature, whether it be of good 
 or evil omen to our enterprise. But I reflect that the Plymouth 
 pilgrims arrived in the midst of storm, and stepped ashore 
 upon mountain snow-drifts; and, nevertheless, they prospered, 
 and became a great people, and doubtless it will be the same 
 with us. I laud my stars, however, that you will not have your 
 first impressions of (perhaps) our future home from such a day 
 as this. . . . Through faith, I persist in believing that Spring 
 and Summer will come in their due season; but the unre- 
 generated man shivers within me, and suggests a doubt 
 whether I may not have wandered within the precincts of the 
 Arctic Circle, and chosen my heritage among everlasting 
 snows. ... I have not yet taken my first lesson in agricul 
 ture, except that I went to see our cows foddered, yesterday 
 afternoon. We have eight of our own; and the number is 
 now increased by a transcendental heifer belonging to Miss 
 Margaret Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to 
 kick over the milk-pail. ... I intend to convert myself into 
 a milk-maid this evening, but I pray Heaven that Mr. Ripley 
 may be moved to assign me the kindliest cow in the herd, 
 otherwise I shall perform my duty with fear and trembling. 
 
 "Before breakfast I went out to the barn and began to 
 chop hay for the cattle, and with such righteous vehemence/ 
 as Mr. Ripley says, did I labor, that in the space of ten min 
 utes I broke the machine. Then I brought wood and re 
 plenished the fires; and finally went down to breakfast, and 
 ate up a huge mound of buckwheat cakes. After breakfast, 
 Mr. Ripley put a four-pronged instrument into my hands, 
 which he gave me to understand was a pitchfork; and he and 
 Mr. Farley being armed with similar weapons, we all three 
 commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of manure. This 
 office being concluded, and I having purified myself, I sit 
 down to finish this letter. 
 
 "What an abominable hand do I scribble! but I have been 
 chopping wood and turning a grindstone all the forenoon; and 
 such occupations are likely to disturb the equilibrium of the 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 223 
 
 muscles and sinews. It is an endless surprise to me how much 
 work there is to be done in the world; but, thank God, I 
 am able to do my share of it, and my ability increases 
 daily. ... I milked two cows this morning, and would send 
 you some of the milk, only that it is mingled with that which 
 was drawn forth by Mr. Dismal View and the rest of my 
 brethren." 
 
 There is something strangely amusing in the faith Haw 
 thorne had in this new work of his hands; perhaps no Ameri 
 can, not even Emerson, was less adapted for a routine of toil. 
 Hawthorne s reflective, brooding nature, his inheritance from 
 one part of the Puritan temper, led him in the very midst of 
 his barnyard duties to wander in his dream world, and to feel 
 the unreality of actual things. Not a day went by, he said, 
 that did not teach him how facts are changed in their passage 
 through the human mind, until truth seems a fantasy, never 
 to be grasped. He found amusement in the comrade who 
 quoted Latin and made classical allusions while turning over 
 the manure-pile; his whole residence at Brook Farm suggests 
 the same incongruity. Some pathos also belongs to the pic 
 ture, if we remember how often in his career Hawthorne 
 yearned for an actual, hand-to-hand grapple with life, and 
 how all his attempts disappointed him with a sense that his 
 most rugged experiences in the Custom-house, at Brook 
 Farm, in the Liverpool Consulate were turned into phan 
 toms by the magic of his self-analysis. Even had the Brook 
 Farm enterprise succeeded in its general purpose, it would 
 have failed for Hawthorne; for as soon as he had stored up the 
 ideas and sensations any way of life could contribute, that way 
 of life began to pall upon him, and he longed for freedom. 
 Early in May, 1841, he records the first glimmering of discon 
 tent, when he writes that he would not be so patient if he were 
 not engaged in a righteous and heavenly-blessed way of life. 
 But a slight acquaintance with his nature is enough to con- 
 
224 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 vince us that he would not long be patient with any conven 
 tion for such purely moral reasons; the fact that he mentions 
 no others shows that the experience was already unproduc 
 tive in spiritual ways. By another month his discontent finds 
 clear expression. "In the midst of toil, or after a hard day s 
 work in the gold-mine, my soul obstinately refuses to be 
 poured out on paper. That abominable gold-mine! Thank 
 God, we anticipate getting rid of its treasures in the course of 
 two or three days ! Of all hateful places that is the worst, and 
 I shall never comfort myself for having spent so many days of 
 blessed sunshine there. It is my opinion that a man s soul 
 may be buried and perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow 
 of the field, just as well as under a pile of money." 
 
 By August Hawthorne s frame of mind was in direct con 
 trast with all his first hopes of the Farm, both for himself 
 and for the community. "In a little more than a fortnight," 
 he wrote, "I shall be free from my bondage, free to enjoy 
 Nature, free to think and feel. . . . Even my Custom 
 house experience was not such a thralldom and weariness; my 
 mind and heart were free. Oh, labor is the curse of the world, 
 and nobody can meddle with it without becoming propor- 
 tionably brutified ! Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have 
 spent five golden months in providing food for cows and 
 horses? It is not so." Later in the same month he writes 
 Sophia Peabody that they must no longer depend upon the 
 Farm for their hope of a home; it was extremely doubtful 
 whether the community could be permanent. During a visit 
 to his home in Salem in. September he writes of the past 
 months as though they were already part of antiquity, and 
 describes characteristically the illusion they had become. The 
 words might be applied to most of the "practical" passages 
 in his life: 
 
 "I should judge it to be twenty years since I left Brook 
 Farm; and this I take to be one proof that my life there was 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 225 
 
 an unnatural and unsuitable, and therefore an unreal, one. 
 It already looks like a dream behind me. The real Me 
 was never an associate of the community; there has been a 
 spectral Appearance there, sounding the horn at day break, 
 and milking the cows, and hoeing potatoes, and raking hay, 
 toiling in the sun, and doing me the honor to assume my 
 name. But this spectre was not myself. Nevertheless, it is 
 somewhat remarkable that my hands have, during the past 
 summer, grown very brown and rough, insomuch that many 
 people persist in believing that I, after all, was the aforesaid 
 spectral horn-sounder, cow-milker, potato-hoer, and hay- 
 raker. But such people do not know a reality from a shadow." 
 
 Hawthorne returned to Brook Farm, but as a resident 
 rather than worker, and with the conviction that this second 
 stay was only temporary. He intended to use his new leisure 
 for writing, but even his release from the farm labor did not 
 give him the solitude his genius needed. His residence at the 
 Farm produced at the time only one book, Biographical 
 Stories for Children, 1842, simply told lives of Benjamin 
 West, Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Cromwell, 
 Benjamin Franklin, and Queen Christina; one story, A Vir 
 tuoso s Collection, in The Boston Miscellany, May, 1842; and 
 the enlarged edition of Twice Told Tales, in the same year. 
 The best that Brook Farm had done for his genius was to 
 give it material, to be used later; at the moment, Haw 
 thorne very naturally felt that his time there had been 
 wasted. 
 
 In so far as he had hoped to win a home in the community, 
 Hawthorne had worse than failed; he had lost even the few 
 savings with which he began. Having practically nothing 
 left but his slight literary prospects, he and Sophia now made 
 a poet s choice, and determined, since poor they were, to be 
 poor together. They found a home that promised suitable 
 privacy in the Old Manse, at Concord, and they were ac 
 cordingly married on July 9, 1842, at Boston. 
 
226 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 VI 
 
 Hawthorne has described the Old Manse in the introduc 
 tory sketch in the Mosses, and his journal gives a more de 
 tailed record of his life in the house. The home, so secluded, 
 so steeped in the past, suited his genius peculiarly; perhaps 
 none of his later homes accommodated themselves so fully to 
 the way of life his temperament desired. Yet for that very 
 reason the residence in the Old Manse, ideally happy in his 
 love and in the birth of his first child Una, on March 3, 1844, 
 was not very profitable to Hawthorne for any advance in his 
 profession. The image under which he most often repre 
 sented his new joys, the original Paradise, was true in this 
 sense also, that so far as his own account can be trusted he 
 did very little work. " A rainy day, a rainy day," he writes. 
 "I am commanded to take my pen in hand, and I am there 
 fore banished to the little ten-foot-square apartment mis 
 named my study; but perhaps the dismalness of the day and 
 the dulness of my solitude will be the prominent characteris 
 tics of what I write. And what is there to write about ? Hap 
 piness has no succession of events, because it is a part of eter 
 nity; and we have been living in eternity ever since we came to 
 this old manse." It is no cause for wonder that this sense of 
 Eden should have colored Hawthorne s thought of his young 
 home, or should have chained his energies for a time; quiet as 
 the life was, so that the unusual caller was a matter for hu 
 morous comment in the journal, these were rare spirits in the 
 neighborhood, rare enough to reduce an appreciative mind 
 to a state of inactive wonder. A sense of these privileges is in 
 all that Hawthorne writes of that time, and he generously in 
 cludes the few less important in the glamor he sets around the 
 great ones. George Prescott came daily "to bring three pints 
 of milk from some ambrosial cow," and sometimes to make 
 an offering of mortal flowers; Emerson came and feasted on 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 227 
 
 the household s "nectar and ambrosia, and Thoreau came to 
 hear the Hawthorne s musical box, or that was his fate, if 
 not his purpose." How should one toil at writing, if one 
 could walk out of an August afternoon and find Margaret 
 Fuller reading a strange book under the trees, where pres 
 ently Emerson also would appear, wise and quaintly hu 
 morous, to say that there were Muses in the woods that day, 
 and whispers in the breeze ! 
 
 Even a social community so select and vague as that which 
 the Hawthornes may be said to have made their own, pre 
 sented at times embarrassing problems. At the very begin 
 ning of their residence in the Old Manse Margaret Fuller de 
 termined that her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Ellery Channing, should board in the novelist s household. 
 Hawthorne s letter declining the proposal is a model of tact 
 ful self-assertion, and leaves the only impression of energy, 
 however quiet, that one can rescue from this period of his life. 
 Other problems, not recorded, must have been met with simi 
 lar adroitness and effect, for the remembrance of him in the 
 neighborhood was entirely pleasant almost affectionate. 
 
 During the years at the Old Manse Hawthorne published 
 many of the stories later gathered in the Mosses, and edited 
 Bridge s Journal oj an African Cruiser. Practically all this 
 writing was done between 1843 an< ^ I ^45> tne nrst vear m 
 Concord had been quite unfruitful. As the time went on, 
 Hawthorne may have been stirred to increasing effort by the 
 poverty that began to threaten him and more than threaten. 
 It was characteristic of him that he should work under pres 
 sure, and the failing pocket-book now gave pressure enough to 
 rouse even a more lethargic nature. It is not entirely appar 
 ent; in the family correspondence, how poor the Hawthornes 
 \Ae at the end of their stay in the Old Manse, for Sophia, 
 like her husband, wrote of their life with playful cheerfulness. 
 But much should be read between the lines of her account of 
 
228 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 their Christmas housekeeping, when the cook was in Boston 
 and Hawthorne did the work. * He rose betimes in the morn 
 ings, and kindled fires in the kitchen and breakfastroom, and 
 by the time I came down, the tea-kettle boiled, and potatoes 
 were baked and rice cooked, and my lord sat with a book, 
 superintending. Just imagine that superb head peeping at 
 the rice or examining the potatoes with the air and port of a 
 monarch ! And that angelica riso on his face, lifting him clean 
 out of culinary scenes into the arc of the gods. . . . On 
 Christmas day we had a truly Paradisaical dinner of pre 
 served quince and apple, dates, and bread and cheese, and 
 milk." 
 
 It was Hawthorne s good fortune, or more properly, it was 
 the just reward of his genius and nature, to be appreciated 
 and loyally served by a few capable friends. Through them 
 he had been called to Bancroft s attention, with the result of 
 the appointment in the Boston Custom-house. Now one 
 May day in 1845, Horatio Bridge, affectionately known as the 
 "Admiral," and Franklin Pierce made a visit to Hawthorne, 
 and gave him, as his wife said, solid hope. They found Haw 
 thorne in the shed, hewing wood, and brought him out in a 
 triumphant gale of boyish spirits, Pierce with his arm encir 
 cling the novelist s workman s frock, and Bridge dancing and 
 gesticulating and opening his round eyes "like an owl." 
 
 In the following summer Bridge organized a " sailor house- 
 party" at his quarters at Portsmouth Navy Yard, for the pur 
 pose of introducing Hawthorne to other friends influential in 
 politics. Pierce was there, and Senator Atherton of New 
 Hampshire, and Senator Fairfield of Maine. These were the 
 important guests, and Hawthorne s charm fell upon them all. 
 One has a sense of something not quite noble in Hawthorne s 
 willingness to apply thus for government positions, for he 
 must have understood the intention of his friends. But love 
 of country, strongly as he felt it in his own way, never took the 
 
UNIVERSITY J 
 
 OF / 
 
 --,: : ;..; - " 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 229 
 
 form of jealous scruple with him, as it did with Cooper; he 
 never felt called upon to defend his country with anything 
 like Cooper s enthusiasm, nor indeed, to defend it at all; he 
 accepted politics simply as a natural condition, and criticized 
 politicians like ordinary human beings, impartially, without 
 reference to the system that made them as they were. This 
 attitude, clearly denned in the foreign note-books and in the 
 introduction to The Scarlet Letter, adds materially to the popu 
 lar conception of the bloodlessness of Hawthorne s character; 
 his passive acceptance of public conditions appears to be 
 cynical, or at least very far from the attitude his countrymen 
 expect in their best men. But the explanation lies again in 
 that inwardness of his nature, that fixed contemplation of 
 the effects of life, which left him small interest in life itself. 
 Hawthorne is habitually jealous of the power of his office- 
 holding upon his soul; when he sees ignoble symptoms there, 
 he is immediately strenuous in his wish to be free; until his 
 soul is so touched, he is indifferent to the possibilities of out 
 ward things. However one-sided this frame of mind may be, 
 it is capable of defense on its own grounds; certainly Haw 
 thorne s genius justified itself, and a critical method that 
 would seek to hold him to the standards that would measure 
 Cooper, will give only vague and unsatisfactory results. 
 
 On March 23, 1846, Hawthorne was made surveyor of the 
 Salem Custom-house, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars, 
 and he returned to his boyhood home. So confident was he 
 of the appointment, that he had in fact returned to the old 
 house the previous October. During the four years that he 
 now spent in Salem, he lived first in the Herbert Street home, 
 with his mother and sisters, and then as the larger family 
 proved too many, he removed to a house in Chestnut Street, 
 and still later, to a house in Mall Street, where his mother and 
 sisters afterward rejoined him, and where his mother died. 
 In 1846 part of the summer and autumn were spent in Boston, 
 
2 3 
 
 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 in Carver Street, and there the son, Julian, was born. In a 
 letter a year later Sophia Hawthorne describes the new Mall 
 Street home; the account indicates the change in the environ 
 ment of Hawthorne s genius since he first left the somber 
 dwelling of his youth : 
 
 "My husband s study will be high from all noise, and it 
 will be to t me a Paradise of Peace to think of him alone and 
 still, yet within my reach. He has now lived in the nursery a 
 year without a chance for one hour s uninterrupted musing, 
 and without his desk being once opened! He the heaven- 
 gifted Seer to spend his life between the Custom-house and 
 the nursery! I want him to be with me, not because he must 
 be, but only when he is just in the mood for all the scenes of 
 Babydom. In the evening he is always mine, for then he 
 never wishes to write. ... It will be very pleasant to have 
 Madame Hawthorne in the house. Her suite of rooms is 
 wholly distinct from ours, so that we shall only meet when we 
 choose to do so. There are very few people in the world 
 whom I should like or would consent to have in the house even 
 in this way; but Madame Hawthorne is so uninterfering, of so 
 much delicacy, that I shall never know she is near excepting 
 when I wish it; and she has so much kindness and sense and 
 spirit that she will be a great resource in emergencies. ... I 
 am so glad to win her out of that Castle Dismal, and from the 
 mysterious chamber into which no mortal ever peeped, till 
 Una was born, and Julian, for they alone have entered the 
 penetralia. Into that chamber the sun never shines. Into 
 these rooms in Mall Street it blazes without stint." 
 
 Hawthorne took up his duties in the Custom-house with 
 more than the pride he usually felt in each new attempt toward 
 practical service. There was here, in addition, a family tradi 
 tion to inspire him; he imagined his ancestors, sturdy and 
 efficient as they were, beholding with satisfaction their 
 dreamer descendant as he took his place in their line. We 
 have his feelings in his own words in the sketch of the Custom 
 house which so incongruously prefaces The Scarlet Letter. 
 Certainly, those of his ghostly great-grandsires who ques- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 231 
 
 tioned his story-writing, as he fancied, and judged him a de 
 generate, no more serviceable to mankind in his day and gen 
 eration than a fiddler, must have approved the vigor with 
 which he seems to have discharged his duties. He had more 
 leisure than at the Boston Custom-house, only three or four 
 hours of the day had to be given to business; but in that time 
 he made a solid impression upon his comrades of his ability, 
 and sometimes, too, of his strong temper. He is said to have 
 been "tempestuous" when aroused; "What in God s name 
 have you sent on board my ship as an inspector?" asked one 
 captain who had fled up the wharf and taken refuge in the 
 office. Much humor and some ill-nature is in the introduc 
 tion to The Scarlet Letter; it is easy to think back to the causes 
 of that sharp portrait of indolent, official life, with the em 
 phasis on its meanness; the firm hand of his ancestors and the 
 brooding aloofness of his own nature made his environment 
 hardly attractive, for all his temporary pride in practical 
 work. 
 
 His leisure gave Hawthorne opportunity to come out of 
 himself and mingle more with the society that experience and 
 his wife s good influence had taught him to like. But it gave 
 him no inspiration to write. His duties each day prevented 
 the creative mood. It was not long before he realized again 
 the disgust with actual things, taken simply as facts, which 
 had made Brook Farm a failure for him spiritually as well as 
 financially, and which earlier had made Brook Farm seem a 
 land of promise to which he could escape from the Boston 
 Custom-house. After he had extracted by the alchemy of his 
 genius, the inner meaning of any experience, the experience 
 was for him empty and lifeless, and his nature struggled to be 
 unchained from it as from a corpse. But for a while, at least, 
 his new existence in Salem was smooth enough. 
 
 Early in 1846 the Mosses from an Old Manse had been pub 
 lished in New York. The volume is naturally associated with 
 
232 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the Twice Told Tales, and in many respects it represents the 
 same stage of Hawthorne s art. The contents consist of 
 stories and sketches, the latter bordering always upon the 
 essay, and the former rich in speculation upon the chances 
 and possibilities of life. In these later stories, too, Haw 
 thorne s imagination, as his critics have pointed out, busies 
 itself usually with a physical symbol, very clearly defined and 
 treated allegorically. The ready examples are found in The 
 Birthmark, where the one flaw in perfect beauty is made the 
 necessary condition of human life, and in Egotism; Or the 
 Bosom Serpent, the title of which tells the story, except that 
 the bosom serpent is killed or driven out by the entrance of 
 love into Roderick s heart. In the essays, such as the genial 
 Fire Worship, there is the pleasant cheerfulness of the earlier 
 volume, hardly more mature or in any way altered, and cer 
 tainly no less delightful. Some indication of the happiness of 
 the past few years might be suspected in this essay, so full of 
 the hearth, or in The New Adam and Eve, with its echo of the 
 Hawthornes Concord sentiment, and its picture of perfect 
 love; but this allegory was conceived, and its title practically 
 assigned to it, in 1836. Almost all the Mosses are entered in 
 their germ around that year in Hawthorne s note-book. 
 
 Though these stories belong to the same general inspiration 
 as the Twice Told Tales, they give on the whole a different 
 impression. Most obviously, they differ in a greater em 
 phasis upon allegory, and a slighter indeed negligible in 
 terest in history, or in the past in any form. Roger Malvin s 
 Burial is the only story that draws even remotely upon that 
 source of romance. And in the allegorical tendency of the ma - 
 jority of the pieces The Birthmark, Rappaccini s Daughter, 
 Feathertop the interest is rather experimental than didactic; 
 Hawthorne throws life into certain strange combinations, to 
 see what will come of them; and this curiosity, most often 
 deeply philosophical, is spent at times upon mere fancies of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 233 
 
 juxtaposition, as in The Virtuoso 1 s Collection, in which, to use 
 his own note for the story, he pictures ( an imaginary museum, 
 containing such articles as Aaron s rod, the petticoat of Gen 
 eral Harrison, the pistol with which Benton shot Jackson 
 and then a diorama, consisting of political or other scenes, or 
 done in wax-work." Whatever else Hawthorne s art might 
 become, The Mosses from an Old Manse indicated that he was 
 to be a kind of experimenter with life, caring less for the out 
 ward established order of experience than for the new signifi 
 cances and possibilities of the soul. At the same time, the re 
 serve which keeps* his personality so distant from his work, 
 takes from it also that impression of passionate ideal search 
 which can ennoble the experiments of philosopher or scien 
 tist; the absence of emotion from Hawthorne s curiosity is the 
 main excuse for judging him, as his recent critics have judged, 
 ineffectual and cold ; and that absence of emotion is most felt 
 in this volume. At best, the curiosity to experiment with life 
 is pitiful, in The Birthmark; at the other extreme, in Feather- 
 top, it is trifling. 
 
 Since these allegorical stories are devoted so largely to 
 spiritual experiment, it is not surprising that their genesis is 
 usually in an idea, rather than in a plot. It is usually con 
 sidered the mark of a true story-teller that he thinks in terms 
 of plot; whether or not we must infer that Hawthorne was no 
 true story-teller, it is clear from entries in his note-book that 
 the experiment was the thing which occurred to him, and the 
 story was worked out to convey the idea. Some illustration 
 of this habit of mind has been casually given already; it can 
 hardly be made too clear. A hint of a story, some incident 
 which should bring on a general war; and the chief actor in the 
 incident to have something corresponding to the mischief he 
 had caused;" " A well-concerted train of events to be thrown 
 into confusion by some misplaced circumstance, unsuspected 
 till the catastrophe, yet exerting its influence from beginning 
 
234 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 to end;" "Cannon transformed to church-bells;" "Follow 
 out the fantasy of a man taking his life by instalments, in 
 stead of at one payment, say ten years of life alternately 
 with ten years of suspended animation" these are typical 
 notes. More familiar, because of their later form, are these: 
 "A snake taken into a man s stomach and nourished there 
 from fifteen years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. 
 A type of envy or some evil passion." "The semblance of a 
 human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or in the 
 fracture of a small stone, by a lusus natures. The face is an 
 object of curiosity for years or centuries, and by and by a boy 
 is born, whose features gradually assume the aspect of that 
 portrait. At some critical juncture, the resemblance is found 
 to be perfect. A prophecy may be connected." "A person 
 to be the death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more 
 than mortal perfection; yet this should be a comfort to him 
 for having aimed so highly and holily." Among these notes 
 is the brief anecdote of the lovers of Acadia, which in Long 
 fellow s hands became Evangeline; and one final illustration, 
 with a richness of suggestion that elaboration could hardly 
 have increased, deserves to be remembered among Haw 
 thorne s most typical work, "A person to be writing a tale, 
 and to find that it shapes itself against his intentions; that the 
 characters act otherwise than he thought; that unforeseen 
 events occur; and a catastrophe comes which he strives in 
 vain to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate, he hav 
 ing made himself one of the personages." 
 
 To whatever degree Hawthorne s predisposition toward 
 allegory may have injured his longer romances, when com 
 bined with other narrative elements, certainly in the Mosses 
 he attains to almost unique skill in this kind of writing. Per 
 haps no other modern writer has managed to indicate so 
 much of the soul s deeper experiences through this medium, 
 which still is strange and artificial to the race, for all its fa- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 235 
 
 miliarity with sacred parables. Hawthorne s matchless sense 
 of " keeping," the gift that distinguishes all of his tales, serves 
 to make his allegory understandable by rejecting every note 
 that is foreign to the spirit of the combined fable and inner 
 meaning. This praise, however, can be given only to his short 
 allegories; in the longer romances his parable is at times 
 pressed far, and confused. And his undoubted gift for pure 
 story-telling aids the allegory immensely, as a similar gift 
 aided Bunyan, by finding for the germ idea a dress always of 
 quaint interest, and often of surprising ingenuity. The rela 
 tion between The Birthmark, complete and inevitable as it 
 seems in the fitness of its plot, and the original note for it, 
 when the outward circumstances of that plot were unthought 
 of, is a matter for study and wonder. Surely that acquaint 
 ance with the actual must have been amazingly large, from 
 which Hawthorne could take a series of incidents inevitably 
 in such a high state of selection. 
 
 In only two pieces is the allegorical content submerged to 
 the point where the narrative becomes truly a story, but in 
 Roger Malviri s Burial and Rappaccini s Daughter Haw 
 thorne s genius in story-telling has supreme examples. The 
 first is set in the early frontier history of New England, and 
 belongs to the class of tales of which the Gray Champion 
 came first. The allegorical method is laid aside for once, and 
 the theme of fate is substituted. The youth who promises to 
 return to bury his dead father-in-law, and fails to keep his 
 word, at last expiates his neglect by the unintentional murder 
 )f his own child on that very spot. This fatalistic avenging 
 of sin is as much in the web of Hawthorne s mind as the alle 
 gorical method is in his art; but the reader finds a main in 
 terest in the change of Reuben s character, as his conscious- 
 s ness of guilt pursues him. Hawthorne conies to his own in 
 the theme of the secret sin that was to pursue the young warrior 
 to a ghastly expiation; the story is among the most powerful 
 
236 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 he wrote, since it was such a hard choice to leave Roger Mai- 
 vin to a lonely death, or to throw away youth and life in a use 
 less effort to comfort him; once the wrong choice is made, the 
 theme of fate shadows the story irresistibly. Here is the very 
 heart of the gloom which Hawthorne finds characteristic in 
 human nature wrong judgment, turning into secret sin. 
 
 " There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incom 
 municable thought something he was to conceal most heed- 
 fully from her whom he most loved and trusted. He regretted, 
 deeply and bitterly, the moral cowardice that had restrained 
 his words when he was about to disclose the truth to Dorcas; 
 but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the dread of univer 
 sal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood. He felt that 
 for leaving Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. His pres 
 ence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own life, would have added 
 only another and a needless agony to the last moments of the 
 dying man; but concealment had imparted to a justifiable 
 act much of the secret effect of guilt; and Reuben, while rea 
 son told him that he had done right, experienced in no small 
 degree the mental horrors which punish the perpetrator of 
 undiscovered crime. By a certain association of ideas, he at 
 times almost imagined himself a murderer. For years, also, a 
 thought would occasionally recur, which, though he per 
 ceived all its folly and extravagance, he had not the power to 
 banish from his mind. It was a haunting and torturing fancy 
 that his father-in-law was yet sitting at the foot of the rock, 
 on the withered forest leaves, alive, and awaiting his pledged 
 assistance." 
 
 Roger Malmri s Burial is the most powerful story, morally, 
 of the Mosses jrom an Old Manse, but Rappaccini s Daughter 
 is more characteristic of the volume, and perhaps of Haw 
 thorne s genius. The plot is subtly allegorical, and deals 
 with one of those experiments with strange possibilities of 
 life which have been considered before. The story is remark 
 able chiefly, perhaps, because of the perfect skill necessary 
 to make such a fanciful adventure seem real. Hawthorne 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 237 
 
 had transcribed in his note-book from Burton s Anatomy o] 
 Melancholy the account of the woman, fed on poisons, who 
 had been sent to Alexander for the purpose of destroying him. 
 The story is removed into that cold realm of thought in which 
 Hawthorne s allegories so often flourish, by the change of the 
 motive from passion for revenge upon a usurping conqueror, 
 to mere scientific curiosity; Rappaccini feeds his daughter on 
 poisons simply to watch the result. And the allegorical bent 
 is given to the tale by the fatal effect of the antidote; Beatrice 
 has fed on poisons so long that the wholesome drug kills her. 
 If we add that the antidote, and consequently the death of 
 Beatrice, is procured by Doctor Baglioni out of professional 
 jealousy, we have enumerated the simple elements of the 
 story. But its power is in the subtle skill that paints the poi 
 sonous influence as a thing of tropical, if baneful, beauty, 
 that makes Beatrice seem the natural kindred of the terrible 
 flower, fed with no grosser nourishment than its fragrance; 
 the same skill keeps before us the sinister, intellectual face of 
 Rappaccini among the passionate flowers, incarnate evil be 
 traying the impulses of life. To set Beatrice in her garden, 
 where the poison flower explains and prepares for the dis 
 closure of her nature, is the device of genius. 
 
 What, more than anything else, gives all the stories in the 
 volume their weight, whether they are allegorical or not, is 
 Hawthorne s insistence upon the two themes of fate and sin. 
 How sin enters a life unawares, or how the mere sight of it 
 contaminates, or, in the lighter sketches, how untruth in some 
 form masquerades and gives impress to the lives it crosses 
 one of these subjects is almost sure to enter each tale; and 
 in each, the inexorable consequence of sin or error is por 
 trayed with a depth that makes even the most fanciful alle 
 gory grip the attention. The darkest version of this fate is in 
 ~Young Goodman Brown, where the dream of the devil s 
 orgies blights every waking moment thereafter, making Good- 
 
238 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 man Brown a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a 
 desperate man. But it is in the other stories too, as the pass 
 ing illustrations will have shown, and it is near the center of 
 Hawthorne s philosophy. Few readers will not follow such a 
 theme with human interest, whether or not they regret its 
 gloom; and this human interest justifies the allegorical fabric 
 of the tales, which otherwise might easily be fanciful and in 
 effective. With the Mosses Hawthorne had finished his ap 
 prenticeship; he had mastered a few great themes, and ac 
 quired practically flawless skill in treating them, and through 
 theme and technic both, he had learned to express his own 
 character. The apparently unproductive years in the Salem 
 Custom-house were to prove but a resting spell before the 
 
 creation of his masterpiece. 
 
 ^41 
 
 VII 
 
 Hawthorne wrote practically nothing during this residence 
 at Salem until November, 1847, when he began to write every 
 day. The results of this industry were a few more short 
 stories, in the general vein of the Tales and the Mosses, The 
 Snow Image, the Great Stone Face, Main Street, and perhaps 
 Ethan Brand, if a reference in a letter from Sophia Haw 
 thorne, in 1848, may be taken to describe this tragic study. 
 The stories were gathered in a volume entitled The Snow 
 Image and Other Twice Told Tales, and published in Boston 
 in 1852. But this was all Hawthorne wrote till 1849. 
 
 In June of that year, with a change of administration, he 
 was naturally dismissed from office. His disappointment 
 for he had apparently hoped to remain was increased by a 
 charge that he had used his position for political partisanship. 
 His indifference to all politics ought to have acquitted him 
 rather easily, but a useless controversy followed, with the 
 effect of making him thoroughly detest his native city. For 
 that feeling it has been shown he was much to blame. Salem 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 239 
 
 would doubtless have honored him if he had allowed it the 
 privilege; but though he had come out of himself more than 
 in his youth, he had managed to keep his character and tem 
 perament largely unknown. 
 
 To other causes of annoyance was now added the practical 
 question of supporting his family. The salary at the Custom 
 house had been sufficient to clear him of old debts, but he had 
 saved nothing. If it had not been for this poverty, he would 
 have received his new freedom with unmixed joy, for his 
 spirit was weary enough of bread-and-butter routine. He 
 wrote to a friend, asking for literary employment; evidently 
 he hoped once more to support himself with his pen. The 
 manner, however, in which his wife received the news of his 
 dismissal, gave a definite direction to his plans. He came 
 home earlier than usual, the day he lost his office, and Mrs. 
 Hawthorne, on learning the cause, exclaimed, "Oh, then you 
 can write your book!" Hawthorne felt quite unable to share 
 her pleasure in the opportune leisure, not knowing how he 
 could support his family till the book was done; but his wife, 
 without his knowledge, had saved up a considerable sum out 
 of her household money, and now brought forth this faery 
 hoard from the drawer of her desk. That afternoon Haw 
 thorne began The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 The romance was written in circumstances of extreme sor 
 row. In July, 1849, Madam Hawthorne, who was then liv 
 ing with her son, began to fail rapidly, and it was soon appar 
 ent that her end was near. The care of nursing her, for some 
 reason, fell not upon her daughters, but upon Sophia Haw 
 thorne, and Hawthorne himself was distracted from his book 
 by many simple household cares. What was in his mind at 
 the time is recorded in the journal, to which he had recourse 
 as an outlet of personal feelings not to be expressed in a less 
 intimate way. His account of his mother s death-bed has been 
 quoted ; the journal pictures in still greater detail the travesty 
 
24 o LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 on that solemn scene, played by Una and Julian in their 
 childish game: " Julian is now lying on his couch in the char 
 acter of sick grandmamma, while Una waits on him as Mrs. 
 Dike. She prompts him in the performance, showing a quite 
 perfect knowledge of how it should all be: Now, stretch 
 out your hands to be held. Will you have some of this 
 jelly? Julian starts up to take the imaginary jelly. No; 
 grandmamma lies still. He smacks his lips. You must not 
 move your lips so hard. Do you think Una had better come 
 up ? No. You feel so, don t you ? His round curly head 
 and rosy face, with a twinkling smile upon it, do not look the 
 character very well. Now Una is transformed into grand 
 mamma, and Julian is mamma, taking care of her. She 
 groans, and speaks with difficulty, and moves herself feebly 
 and wearisomely; then lies perfectly still, as if in an insen 
 sible state; then rouses herself and calls for wine; then lies 
 down on her back with clasped hands; then puts them to her 
 head. It recalls the scene of yesterday with frightful dis 
 tinctness; and out of the midst of it little Una looks at me 
 with a smile of glee." 
 
 Hawthorne s mother died on the last day of July. As the 
 care of his two sisters devolved upon Hawthorne, he and his 
 wife began to plan immediately to leave Salem for a more 
 economical and less sad-memoried home. The change was 
 not made, however, until the next year. Hawthorne worked 
 industriously at his romance, nine hours a day, if we may 
 take seriously a remark in one of his wife s letters; and his 
 wife took to her painting again, evidently with an idea of add 
 ing to their diminishing funds. But it was quite impossible 
 to make up in any such way the heavy expenses of the sum 
 mer, and Hawthorne was in a situation of very real embar 
 rassment, when in January, 1850, a tactful letter from his 
 friend Hillard brought a check for a most convenient amount, 
 contributed by anonymous friends. "I know the sensitive 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 241 
 
 edge of your temperament," wrote Hillard, "but do not speak 
 or think of obligation. It is only paying, in a very imperfect 
 measure, the debt we owe you for what you have done for 
 American Literature." Hawthorne s reply is not that of a 
 dreamer; but of a proud man deeply humiliated by misfor 
 tune, yet sincerely grateful. It was a dark moment when he 
 wrote, "It is something else besides pride that teaches me 
 that ill-success in life is really and justly a matter of shame. 
 I am ashamed of it, and I ought to be. The fault of a failure 
 is attributable in a great degree at least to the man who 
 fails. I should apply this truth in judging of other men; and 
 it behooves me not to shun its point or edge in taking it home 
 to my own heart. Nobody has a right to live in the world un 
 less he be strong and able, and applies his ability to good 
 purpose." A little less than three years later Hawthorne was 
 able to return the money to Hillard with interest ; it is easy to 
 imagine the satisfaction with which the second letter was 
 written, after so short an interval, but with the consciousness 
 that his family were secure from risk of poverty. "This act 
 of kindness," he writes, "did me an unspeakable amount of 
 good; for it came when I most needed to be assured that any 
 body thought it worth while to keep me from sinking. And 
 it did me even greater good than this, in making me sensible 
 of the need of sterner efforts than my former ones, in order to 
 establish a right for myself to live and be comfortable." 
 
 Four days after the receipt of Hillard s gift, The Scarlet 
 Letter was finished. So much has been recorded of the cir 
 cumstances in which the book was written and found its way 
 to publication, that its history can best be told in quotation. 
 Hawthorne himself tells how he read the last pages to his 
 wife, the day he wrote them, and how he broke down, through 
 sheer nervous excitement after the severe task of composi 
 tion. As to his wife, "It broke her heart, and sent her to bed 
 with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a tremendous 
 
242 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 success." The most striking memory of the book, however, 
 is the account given by James T. Fields, telling how he came, 
 in a way that seems curiously fated, to be its publisher. 
 
 "In the winter of 1849, after he had been ejected from the 
 Custom-house, I went down to Salem to see him and inquire 
 after his health, for we heard he had been suffering from ill 
 ness. He was then living in a modest wooden house in Mall 
 Street, if I remember rightly the location. I found him alone 
 in a chamber over the sitting-room of the dwelling; and as the 
 day was cold, he v/as hovering near a stove. We fell into talk 
 about his future prospects, and he was, as I feared I should 
 find him, in a very desponding mood. Now, said I, is the 
 time for you to publish, for I know during these years in 
 Salem you must have got something ready for the press. 
 Nonsense, said he; what heart had I to write anything, 
 when my publishers (M. & Company) have been so many 
 years trying to sell a small edition of the Twice Told Tales ? 
 I still pressed upon him the good chances he would have now 
 with something new. Who would risk publishing a book for 
 me, the most unpopular writer in America? I would, said 
 I, and would start with an edition of two thousand copies of 
 anything you write. What madness! he exclaimed; your 
 friendship for me gets the better of your judgment. No, no, 
 he continued; I have no money to indemnify a publisher s 
 losses on my account. I looked at my watch and found that 
 the train would soon be starting for Boston, and I knew there 
 was not much time to lose in trying to discover what had been 
 his literary work during these last few years at Salem. I re 
 member that I pressed him to reveal to me what he had been 
 writing. He shook his head and gave rne to understand he 
 had produced nothing. At that moment I caught sight of a 
 bureau or set of drawers near where we were sitting; and im 
 mediately it occurred to me that hidden away somewhere in 
 that article of furniture was a story or stories by the author of 
 Twice Told Tales, and I became so positive of it that I charged 
 him vehemently with the fact. He seemed surprised, I 
 thought, but shook his head again; and I rose to take my 
 leave, begging him not to come into the cold entry, saying I 
 would come back and see him again in a few days. I was 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 243 
 
 hurrying down the stairs when he called after me from the 
 chamber, asking me to stop a moment. Th^:n. quickly step 
 ping into the entry with a roll of manuscript in iiis hands, he 
 said: How in Heaven s name did you know this thing was 
 there ? As you have found me out, take what I have written, 
 and tell me, after you get home and have time to read it, if it 
 is good for anything. It is either very good or very bad, I 
 don t know which. On my way up to Boston I read the 
 germ of The Scarlet Letter; before I slept that night I wrote 
 him a note all aglow with admiration of the marvelous story 
 he had put into my hands, and told him that I would come 
 again to Salem the next day and arrange for its publication." 
 
 Hawthorne had intended to include in the volume with his 
 not very lengthy romance several other stories, which he after 
 ward published in The Snow Image. By itself The Scarlet 
 Letter, he thought, was too somber, and he feared to stake the 
 book entirely on that one chance. But his publisher s keen 
 judgment was for putting out the great story on its own merits, 
 and so complete was his confidence that he made the first 
 edition five thousand instead of two. It was put on sale in 
 April, 1850, and a second edition was at once called for. 
 
 Much of the material and the method of The Scarlet Letter 
 is but developed from the Twice Told Tales. The main idea, 
 which gives the book its title, had in fact been sketched in the 
 description of the public square in Endicott and The Red 
 Cross. Among the other citizens in that picture Hawthorne 
 had described a young woman "whose doom it was to wear 
 the letter A on the breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the 
 world and her own children. And even her own children 
 knew what that initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, 
 the lost and desperate creature had embroidered the fatal 
 token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread, and the nicest art 
 of needlework; so that the capital A might have been thought 
 to mean Admirable, or anything rather than Adulteress." In 
 using a symbol as the starting point of his theme, as a physi- 
 
244 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 cal design to be developed and played with by his imagina 
 tion, Hawthorne simply continued the method of the earlier 
 story, or of The Birthmark, or of Lady Eleanor s Mantle. So 
 in portraying the social conditions of early New England he 
 continued that interest in history which was a prime motive 
 with him. Just as the Twice Told Tales contain the solidest 
 material of his shorter work, so The Scarlet Letter has in every 
 sense a basis in reality that none other of his longer romances 
 approached. Both the environment, the setting of the story, 
 and the allegorical symbol, are felt to be historical, and the 
 truths which the book teaches effectively are not allegorized 
 on the surface of the tale, but are implicit in its heart, as in 
 life itself. For this reason the one artistic blemish of the book 
 has been located in the scene where the meteoric lights frame 
 a scarlet A in the heavens. So absolute is the reality of the 
 book, that this fanciful symbolizing of the minister s con 
 science is resented; in one of Hawthorne s lighter studies it 
 would have passed unnoticed. 
 
 The greatness of the story lies in its universal theme, its 
 elevated tone, and the extreme simplicity of its treatment. 
 The theme is the effect of sin upon the soul that commits it 
 especially of secret sin, since Dimmesdale s experience makes 
 the tale. All the characters are noble, as in a Greek story 
 strongly developed in themselves, and holding high position 
 in the community, so that their experiences are large and im 
 portant, as many critics have remarked, like the heroic ad 
 venture of Attic tragedy. This resemblance of tone is in 
 creased by the sense of destiny and retribution in the romance, 
 dark and inexorable as ever the will of the gods was imagined 
 by ancient poets. And in construction the story is the simplest 
 and most closely knit that Hawthorne, or perhaps American 
 literature, produced. The plot needs for its strictest purposes 
 but three characters the lover, the wife, and the injured 
 husband who determines to find the lover and force him to 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 245 
 
 confess his guilt. Pearl gives meaning to the story; she serves, 
 as Hawthorne is careful to tell us, to embody the scarlet 
 letter, all its torture and mercy; she serves also to represent 
 Hester s own youth, and so explains the mother s history by 
 repeating the character in that first passionate form which 
 otherwise we should not see. We take it for granted that she 
 inherits her mother rather than her father, except for the 
 faery daintiness of appearance and manner, which might 
 have belonged to the minister when he was a boy. And these 
 three main characters are studied with a single intensity that 
 excludes any other interests; the tale indeed " keeps close to 
 its point," as Hawthorne said. 
 
 From The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne s cold experimental 
 mood is completely absent, and in its place is an interest in 
 life, which, though outwardly restrained, is truly passionate. 
 It is usual, perhaps, to attribute the study of sin to the Puritan 
 temperament, but it takes only a little perception to see that 
 the attitude in this romance cannot easily be matched in 
 Spenser or Milton or Bunyan, nor in what we know of the 
 New England Puritans. The issue of sin, here represented, 
 is so absolute and so dark, so far from the hope of forgiveness, 
 that the Puritan himself rejects its harsh fatality; and on the 
 other hand, the value placed upon life is here so strong, and 
 the sympathy with human desires is so overwhelming, that 
 much which the Puritan would condemn as sin gets away 
 from rigid categories, and stands in a troublesome compro 
 mise between right and wrong. Both of these variations from 
 the Puritan ideal are, of course, the gift of Hawthorne s own 
 personality. He was a fatalist at heart, and the power of evil 
 to breed evil had occupied his thoughts. He was naturally 
 impressed, also, by the difficulty of judging sin by conven 
 tional standards; he knew, as he had written of the slave- 
 trade, that what one age thought evil, the next might pass by, 
 if not approve, and for those sins which spring from the best 
 
246 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 impulses of the heart, he had a leniency that could not be 
 found even in Mrs. Stowe s work, cheerful Puritan as she wasi 
 The sin in The Scarlet Letter is Dimmesdale s cowardice in 
 refusing to acknowledge the child, and Chillingworth s re 
 vengeful determination, first to discover Pearl s father, and 
 then as he grows more fiend-like to kill that father s soul. 
 The sin for which Hester is punished is hardly presented as 
 sin at all. The wrong of it is balanced in the story by the 
 cruel, loveless marriage Chillingworth had imposed upon her 
 youth, in comparison with which her love for Dimmesdale 
 seems heaven-sent. If that love is sin, the story, true to life, 
 presents the difficult paradox of sin ennobling a soul, for 
 through her love of Pearl and her self -forgetting pity for Dim 
 mesdale Hester s soul is unquestionably ennobled. But in the 
 critical moment when the minister learns that his tormenting 
 physician is the man he wronged, both he and Hester, after 
 all their suffering, see their love as a holy thing, not to be re 
 gretted; and Chillingworth himself, at the very beginning of 
 the story, admits to Hester that her unfaithfulness was no 
 worse than the wrong he had done her. "Mine was the first 
 wrong," he said, "when I betrayed thy budding youth into 
 a false and unnatural relation with my decay. . . . Between 
 thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced." 
 
 Upon the original sin, then, Hawthorne passes no judg 
 ment. The community, however, following a conservative 
 and literal ideal of morality, do pass judgment upon Hester. 
 The punishment they bestow illustrates, as has well been 
 said, the clumsy failure of law to reach the soul. But Haw 
 thorne makes another, equally subtle, use of the Puritan com 
 munity and their stern law to emphasize, against that somber 
 background, the natural force of generous youth. Radical 
 enough in the Old Country, the Puritans stand in the New 
 World for a very rigid conventionality; their ideas seem al 
 ready stultified, inelastic, out of sympathy with the expanse 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 247 
 
 of nature into which they have penetrated. "Hester and Dim- 
 mesdale, whether Hawthorne intended it so or not, are crea 
 tures of a new life, a larger world and larger ideas. Their fit 
 place of meeting is in the forest, whither the conventional 
 community do not come. In no real way are they an integral 
 part of that community; they are opposed to it, and to the age 
 long untenderness for which it stands, less picturesquely but 
 as truly as the Lord and Lady of the May were opposed to 
 Endicott and his men, in the tale of Merry Mount. Indeed, 
 the theme of the individual rising above the community s 
 ideal appears under many guises in The Scarlet Letter, in the 
 single kind word for Hester from the curious crowd around 
 the pillory; in the generous impulses of Dr. Wilson and the 
 Governor, when they let themselves be persuaded not to take 
 Hester s child from her; and most in Hester herself, the 
 largest mind and the largest nature in the book, for whom the 
 world s law was no law. "It was an age in which the human 
 intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a 
 wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword 
 had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these 
 had overthrown and rearranged not actually, but within the 
 sphere of theory, which was their most real abode the whole 
 system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of 
 ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She as 
 sumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the 
 other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they 
 known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that 
 stigmatized by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage by 
 the sea-shore, thoughts visited her, such as dared to enter no 
 other dwelling in New England shadowy guests, that would 
 have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could 
 they have been seen so much as knocking at her door." 
 
 Since Hawthorne s interest is always in the effect of life on 
 the soul, and here in the effect of sin, he leaves untold the 
 
248 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 story of Dimmesdale s love for Hester, and begins the ro 
 mance so long after the episodes which condition it, that curi 
 osity itself is baffled in the effort to imagine the story of Hes 
 ter s fall. When we first see her and her lover, the sin has 
 already had a changing effect upon both; Hester has been 
 strengthened by her very resistance to persecution, and en 
 nobled by her resolve not to betray her lover, and the cow 
 ardice of the minister has already weakened his nature to a 
 degree that renders it hard to conceive of him as the passionate 
 lover. Such an arrangement of the plot doubtless came nat 
 urally from Hawthorne s lack of interest in the first sin, but 
 it serves also to raise the story to a lofty tone, by showing 
 Hester, not as receiving love, but as giving it, becoming 
 through her pity as much the protector of Dimmesdale as of 
 Pearl. Her bosom pillows the broken-hearted minister not 
 as a lover but as a son; even her plan to flee with him is an act 
 of generous rescue, not at all of passion. That Hester was a 
 different woman when Dimmesdale first won her is plainly 
 intimated, but her old nature has been purified, and when 
 she comes to Dimmesdale s rescue at last, her love is without 
 dross. 
 
 The effect of sin unconfessed is the theme of the minister s 
 story, and it needs no comment; Dimmesdale s character, 
 examined outside this allegorical intention, is hard to under 
 stand. This weakness seems inbred and habitual; one ques 
 tions how he could have won the love of such a woman as 
 Hester, except as he wins it at the end, through pity. This 
 apparent difficulty is in the fact that Dimmesdale s nature, 
 when we first see it, is more changed from what it was, than 
 Hester s; on him the sin still lays its full weight, but her pub 
 lic expiation, little as she knows it, has relieved her from the 
 full evil of the inward curse. And Dimmesdale s sin was the 
 act of impulse, as his confession is at last. We see him in his 
 normal mood, and in that state the sin would have been im- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 249 
 
 possible for him. Nothing could show a more complete mis 
 understanding of Hawthorne s romance than the charge, ac 
 tually made at the time, that the story pandered to base 
 thoughts, and ushered in an era of "French " literature. The 
 interest is so far removed, at the very beginning of the story, 
 from any episode of passion, that the reader almost forgets, 
 as he is meant to do, the nature of the sin for which Hester is 
 punished and Dimmesdale persecuted. 
 
 In Chillingworth Hawthorne shows the working out of 
 private revenge as ineffectual for its purpose as the public 
 retribution of the law. The wronged physician, who for all 
 the latent evil in his nature yet begins his revenge with a 
 sense of justice, passes gradually from a dark ambition to dis 
 cover the father of Pearl, to a fiendish determination to ruin 
 the minister s soul. No one recognizes better than Chilling- 
 worth, at the conclusion of the tale, that for Dimmesdale to 
 confess his sin would be to regain his lost manhood, though 
 such a confession was what the physician first desired as his 
 revenge. The terrible revolution in his own character is 
 shown by his frantic effort at last to keep the secret, lest the 
 minister escape. That evil breeds evil, is the moral he 
 teaches, a theme peculiarly Hawthorne s. It is reflected 
 from many passages in this book, and elsewhere throughout 
 his work. The principle is at work in Hester s heart, when at 
 first her self-consciousness of sin begets sight all too keen into 
 the sinfulness of others she had thought pure. Like young 
 Goodman Brown, she sees uncovered the blackness of secret 
 sins; the honored matron, the young maiden, are revealed by 
 the light of the scarlet letter to be of her fallen sisterhood. 
 That Hester was not altogether lost, is shown by her deter 
 mined resistance to this fearful loss of faith in her kind. This, 
 however, is but one aspect of the evil principle. Even acci 
 dental sin, the wrong come at through ignorant impulse, fas 
 cinated Hawthorne s mind with its power over conduct. In 
 
250 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the Introduction to the Mosses he had dwelt on the story 
 Lowell told him, of a youth who chanced on the scene of the 
 Concord fight, with an axe in his hand, immediately after 
 the battle; a wounded British soldier raised himself from the 
 ground before him and stared into his face, whereupon the 
 boy, by a nervous impulse, brained the wretch with a single 
 blow. "The story comes home to me like truth/ says Haw 
 thorne. " Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, 
 I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subse 
 quent career, and observe how his soul was tortured by the 
 bloodstain, contracted as it had been before the long custom 
 of war had robbed human life of its sanctity, and while it 
 still seemed murderous to slay a brother man. This one cir 
 cumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history 
 tells us of the fight." Some of the fruit of the incident is to be 
 found in these stricken characters of The Scarlet Letter, es 
 pecially in Chillingworth. He is impelled to his diabolical 
 revenge by the sin of Hester, which in turn he himself admits 
 was conditioned by his own loveless marriage with her, and 
 that initial wrong was error, not sin. The worst of his pur 
 pose is accomplished when he bids Hester tell Dimmesdale 
 who the physician is, and gives as his reason for the permis 
 sion, his belief that all three persons are in the grip of fate. 
 "By thy first step awry," he tells Hester, "thou didst plant 
 the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark 
 necessity. You that have wronged me are not sinful, save in 
 a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have 
 snatched a fiend s office from his hands. It is our fate. Let 
 the black flower blossom as it may." 
 
 In these words and elsewhere in the story Chillingworth 
 makes some appeal to our sympathy; but the infrequent mo 
 ment is soon forgotten in the general malevolence of his 
 career, and he is the one utterly lost person in the book. Dim- 
 mesdale s pitiful heroism at the last justifies Hester s love; 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 251 
 
 Hester herself rises far above her sin into a glorified woman 
 hood; Chillingworth almost if not quite repeats the history 
 of Rappaccini s daughter, and having fed his soul exclus 
 ively on moral poisons, perishes when that ill fare is taken 
 away. 
 
 Much of the problem of the story and most of the hope in 
 it comes through the character of Pearl. She creates the prob 
 lem, to Hester s mind, not only because her rebellious mood 
 makes her the incarnation of her mother s wilfulness, but also 
 because, though the child of sin, she is lovable and lovely; 
 "How strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman s sin 
 by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous ef 
 ficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were 
 sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin 
 which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose 
 place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her 
 parents forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be 
 finally a blessed soul in heaven!" Whatever comfort could 
 be had from the paradox, Hester at first put aside, not daring 
 to make it hers. Yet as Pearl is the incarnation of Hester s 
 sin, so in mastering the evil in the child s nature, and direct 
 ing its strong impulses, the mother conquers her own wilful- 
 ness and saves her own soul. Dimmesdale s keen instinct, 
 sharpened by envy of Hester s misery, so nobler than his, 
 sees the truth and phrases it for the Governor and Mr. Wil 
 son, that the child was the salvation as well as the torture of 
 the mother, teaching her, "as it were by the Creator s sacred 
 pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also 
 will bring its parent thither. Herein is the sinful mother 
 happier," he said, " than the sinful father." Before the story 
 is finished, Pearl s elfish heart has been softened and human 
 ized. At her father s death her soul is saved beyond even 
 Hester s fear; " As her tears fell upon her father s cheek, they 
 were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and 
 
252 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman 
 in it." 
 
 It is a kind of impertinence to speak of the technical great 
 ness of such a masterpiece as The Scarlet Letter. Yet the 
 reader would be indeed thankless who failed to note how much 
 of his pleasure is in the solemn, musical cadence with which 
 the story moves. The lofty manner extends even to the dia 
 logue, so that the varied characters speak alike in a somber 
 eloquence permissible in romance. Like Cooper, Hawthorne 
 does not excel in the naturalness of his dialogue; the pas 
 sages in which Hester faces the physician, or Governor Bel- 
 lingham, or Mr. Wilson, have their power from their deep 
 emotion rather than from the verisimilitude of the speeches 
 they contain. And it is noteworthy that the largest and most 
 powerful sections of the story, the chapters dealing with the 
 changes of Hester s character, and Dimmesdale s, and Pearl s 
 and Chillingworth s those subtle analyses which are the 
 heart of the book, all represent the story indirectly, with no 
 conversation, no action, and no person on the stage. This 
 striking trait marks the book s near kinship with the essay 
 type with the germs of the novel rather than with its de 
 veloped modern form; and it indicates further, by his choice 
 of method, how much more deeply Hawthorne was concerned 
 with the lessons and philosophies of life natural essay ma 
 terial, than with the presentation of life itself. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Late in the spring of 1850 the Hawthornes removed to a 
 little red house, since burned down, in Lenox, where for a 
 year and a half they were to enjoy a simple home, quite as 
 happy as the Old Manse. The fame that came from The 
 Scarlet Letter would have made a greater difference to another 
 man; to Hawthorne it meant little beyond the comfortable 
 future it promised. He never had the slightest wish to be 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 253 
 
 lionized at any time in his life, and now he retired to a solitude 
 almost as complete as though he were indeed the most ob 
 scure of American writers, instead of one of the most noted. 
 A few friends in the neighborhood visited the household, 
 Herman Melville, the novelist, Fields, Holmes, and others; 
 Fanny Kemble would ride up on her strong black horse and 
 converse, "in heroic phrases," with the inmates, and once at 
 least delighted the small boy of the family by giving him a 
 spirited gallop astride the saddle before her. But it was in the 
 inner happiness of his home that Hawthorne found the recrea 
 tion he much needed. How happy that household was is seen \ 
 in the family letters of the time; it is enough here to state the j 
 fact, for the Hawthorne home remained proverbial for its! 
 ideal sweetness, even among the characteristically happy do- 
 mestic histories of American literary men. 
 
 In August Hawthorne began his second novel, The Hoitse 
 of the Seven Gables, and finished it on January 26, 1851. The 
 record of its composition comes from both the writer and his 
 wife. In October Hawthorne wrote to his publisher that he 
 should not be doing his best work until after the first frost, 
 which always colored his imagination as it did the foliage. A 
 month later he shows more clearly that he is troubled by what 
 he considers the slow progress of the book. "I find the book 
 requires more care and thought than The Scarlet Letter; also 
 I have to wait oftener for a mood. The Scarlet Letter being all 
 in one tone, I had only to get my pitch, and could then go on 
 interminably. Many passages of this book ought to be fin 
 ished with the minuteness of a Dutch picture, in order to give 
 them their proper effect. Sometimes, when tired of it, it 
 strikes me that the whole is an absurdity, from beginning to 
 end ; but the fact is, in writing a romance, a man is always, or 
 ought to be, careering on the utmost verge of a precipitous 
 absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close as possible, 
 without actually tumbling over. My prevailing idea is, that 
 
254 
 
 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the book ought to succeed better than The Scarlet Letter, 
 though I have no idea that it will." 
 
 When the book was finished, Hawthorne stated again on 
 several occasions his preference for this over his first romance; 
 he thought it more characteristic of his mind, more natural 
 for him to write. In later years he is said to have realized 
 more fully the unique greatness of The Scarlet Letter, but his 
 instinctive liking for the less somber story accords with what 
 we read of his private life, and with the sketches in the Twice 
 Told Tales which give a cheerful inkling of his nature. His 
 wife recorded her delight as the story, in process of compo 
 sition, was read to her. Her enthusiasm, not unnaturally, 
 seems partial, yet her praise shows a discrimination of her 
 husband s true gifts, his ability to bring "up out of the 
 muddied wells the pearl of price;" and she recognizes with 
 satisfaction the book s increased cheerfulness over The Scar 
 let Letter. 
 
 Though less powerful and less unique than Hawthorne s 
 masterpiece, The House of the Seven Gables can lay claim to 
 being a truer picture of New England, and in every way a 
 more lovable book. Its author thought it might suffer more 
 severely from criticism because it was laid in less ancient times, 
 and its defects as a portrait of life might therefore be easily 
 noted by the average reader. But whatever the supposed date 
 of the story, nothing that Hawthorne wrote belongs more com 
 pletely in the past; age is its very element. Its truth also is 
 without date, universal; the apparently special features in its 
 realism are still traceable in New England to-day, and so near 
 did the general theme of the romance come to a just portrait, 
 that an irate gentleman named Pyncheon indorsed it by ac 
 cusing Hawthorne of using his grandfather as the original of 
 the villain in the story. The society described is strongly 
 marked by tradition; the house itself is the very symbol of 
 antiquity; the family live in the past, in inherited pride and 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 255 
 
 inherited ambitions; the characters themselves are well on in 
 years, save Phcebe, whose youth seems a quaint exotic, a 
 winter-flower. The passion of young hearts, which furnished 
 the tragic problem and the atmosphere of The Scarlet Letter, 
 is altogether lacking here; the warmth of Phoebe s nature and 
 her love for Holgrave are solitary rays in the November sun- 
 _sei, no less chilly for their light. 
 
 As the earlier romance portrayed the effects of sin upon the 
 sinners, so this story analyzes the effects of ancient wrong 
 upon the last generation sin working its will and receiving 
 its reward, not at one moment, but in long process of time. 
 The wrong that Judge Pyncheon has on his conscience, the 
 injustice to Clifford, is not the book s subject, though it is the 
 immediate concern of the plot; the Judge s sin was brought 
 about by the ill-gotten estate that he coveted, and the ill- 
 gotten estate had its ancestry in the original sin of the first 
 Pyncheon his legal murder of Maule, and the confiscation of 
 Maule s property. The effects of this far-off crime are the 
 romance s theme. Perhaps it is because the crime is so re 
 mote, that the story seems to move in a bloodless old age; 
 the passion of that first ancestor is long-spent, and his blood 
 after many generations is shown to us coursing feebly through 
 an almost ghostly expiation. The familiar theme of the sins 
 of the fathers, treated more dramatically in Ibsen s famous 
 tragedy, is here studied in a quieter mood but with the same 
 relentless grip on fate. In the actual limits of the story no 
 body does anything, nor shows initiative, if we except the 
 vague and phantasmal flight of Hepzibah and Clifford. In 
 the truest sense, all the characters suffer life, rather than live 
 it; even Judge Pyncheon s hypocrisy makes the tacit plea for 
 itself that the Judge is the involuntary reincarnation of the 
 evil genius of his line. 
 
 Not only the evil but the good also in the Pyncheon family, 
 their ideals and their pride even in adversity, are the gift of 
 
256 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 the past. The lost deed, which would have made them heirs 
 of a princely estate in Maine, bestowed upon the family, from 
 generation to generation, a sense of importance, causing "the 
 poorest member of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of 
 nobility, and might yet come into the possession of princely 
 wealth to support it." This pride of inheritance, where only 
 pride is inherited, is common enough in New England, and 
 in a measure was said to characterize the Hawthornes. In 
 more conscious ways the author wrote his history into the 
 book; it was his own ancestor John Hawthorne who hanged a 
 witch and was cursed by the victim, and who thereafter lost 
 the deed which would have given the family title to the town 
 of Raymond, in Maine. And perhaps the trying acquaint 
 ance which Hawthorne had made with poverty during his 
 married years had furnished him with the power to write as 
 exquisitely as he does of Hepzibah s fine feelings, bruised by 
 the rough necessities of life. In her the pride of family, based 
 on an all but mythical claim, had evolved through time s 
 magic into true delicacy and elevation of mind. Nothing in 
 the book convinces more poignantly than the sight of the 
 gaunt daughter of the Puritans setting the penny shop in 
 order, in a heroic resolve, at whatever cost to her pride, to go 
 into trade. When Hawthorne lets us see this unprepossessing 
 gentlewoman agonizing over her first sale of a gingerbread 
 doll, and refusing to take a child s money for it, he seems to 
 plead for a kinder view of the New England temper, chill and 
 angular as it sometimes appears, than he feels sure of finding 
 in his readers; and on an earlier page he puts the plea into 
 \vords. "What tragic dignity," he asks, "can be wrought 
 into a scene like this ! How can we elevate our history of ret 
 ribution for the sin of long ago, when, as one of our most 
 prominent figures, we are compelled to introduce not a 
 young and lovely woman, nor even the stately remains of 
 beauty, storm-shattered by affliction but a gaunt, sallow, 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 257 
 
 rusty- jointed maiden, in a long-waisted silk gown, and with 
 the strange horror of a turban on her head ! Her visage is not 
 even ugly. It is redeemed from insignificance only by the 
 contraction of her eyebrows into a near-sighted scowl. And, 
 finally, her great life-trial seems to be, that, after sixty years 
 of idleness, she finds it convenient to earn comfortable bread 
 by setting up a shop in a small way. Nevertheless, if we look 
 through all the heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this 
 same entanglement of something mean and trivial with what 
 ever is noblest in joy or sorrow. . . . What is called poetic 
 insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely 
 mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which are com 
 pelled to assume a garb so sordid." 
 
 In this book, as in The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne raises the 
 problem of the punishment of sin, and solves it in much the 
 same way; the course of retribution unfolds according to a 
 higher will than man s, and time rather than the law pro 
 nounces sentence. In this respect the story has points of re 
 semblance with Shakspere s The Tempest, and in the whole 
 matter of poetic justice Hawthorne is as near as any other 
 writer to the great poet. The wrong spends itself in time, or 
 recoils upon the doer, and the victim has his compensation in 
 such inward ways that the belated restoration of a stolen 
 dukedom is irrelevant. So here, the murder of old Maule 
 spends itself in one long curse upon the Pyncheon line, their 
 ill-gotten wealth shrivels in the end to a worthless paper, and 
 the last of Maule s descendants comes to his own, not by a res 
 titution of his stolen rights, but through the natural force of 
 his character. What an inherited grievance will do for char 
 acter, molding it to a sensitive resistance to wrong in any 
 form, is thus illustrated in Holgrave, who, without benefit of 
 education, had been in turn a schoolmaster, a salesman, an 
 editor, a peddler, a dentist, a sailor, a lecturer on mesmerism, 
 and finally a daguerreotypist; but through these dangerously 
 
258 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 varied employments his soul came unharmed, because It had 
 been true to one law of its own, not at all like the law of an 
 ordinary soul. Of ordinary convention, even of respecta 
 bility in the narrow sense, the experience of himself and his 
 ancestors, from Maule down, had made him distrustful; the 
 last effect of the ancient wrong, and its reparation, was the 
 self-reliance which makes him the hero of the book. "The 
 true value of his character lay in that deep consciousness of 
 inward strength, which made all his past vicissitudes seem 
 merely like a change of garments; in that enthusiasm, so 
 quiet that he scarcely knew of its existence, but which gave 
 a warmth to everything that he laid his hand on; in that per 
 sonal ambition, hidden from his own as well as other eyes 
 among his more generous impulses, but in which lurked a 
 certain efficacy, that might solidify him from a theorist into 
 the champion of some practical cause." 
 
 More than in The Scarlet Letter - y the persons in this story 
 are strangely solitary figures, touched as it were by the very 
 quality of Hawthorne s own retiring nature, so that they meet 
 each other only at certain points, if they meet at all; never do 
 they mingle. The wonderful bond of loyalty between Hepzi- 
 bah and Clifford leaves them entirely apart to the imagina 
 tion, nor does the girlish Phcebe seem one with her much- 
 experienced, strange-thoughted lover. Uncle Venner lives in 
 his own world, which is somewhat hard to locate; his simple 
 mind furnishes the book with a sweet wisdom that no other 
 person in it is capable of, and his aloofness from human in 
 terests, save through unselfish contemplation of them, gives 
 him a kind of kinship with the legendary Alice Pyncheon 
 whose spirit haunts the house. 
 
 Much of the early method of the Twice Told Tales lives on 
 in this story. Hawthorne s proneness for the physical symbol 
 is in the repeated death-scenes of the doomed race, to whom 
 God gave blood to drink; it is found also in the influence of 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 259 
 
 the portrait of old Judge Pyncheon, which looks down upon 
 the household with malign influence, and before which its 
 tragedies are enacted. But the strongest resemblance to the 
 early stories is in the musing, essay tone of the book; it seems 
 to be, as one of Hawthorne s best critics has said, the climax 
 of the every-day group of realistic, contemplative sketches, 
 as The Scarlet Letter is the culmination of the finer tales. The 
 atmosphere of the book, its quaintness and delicacy, is the 
 product of the same fine observation, the same microscopic 
 truth, that made the value of the essay-sketches in the first 
 volume. To many readers this is the charm of the romance; 
 without being greatly stirred* by the shadowy story, they de 
 light in the verity of the fragile characters, moving through 
 the half-light of their uneventful world, which yet is con 
 vincingly portrayed. 
 
 The letter that James Russell Lowell wrote to Hawthorne 
 on the appearance of the new book may well be taken as typi 
 cal of its reception. "I thought I could not forgive you," he 
 says, "if yqji wrote anything better than The Scarlet Letter; 
 but I cannot help believing it a great triumph that you should 
 have been* able to deepen and widen the impression made by 
 such a book as that. It seems to me that the House is the 
 most valuable contribution to New England history that has 
 been made. It is with the highest art that you have typified 
 (in the revived likeness of Judge Pyncheon to his ancestor 
 the Colonel) that intimate relationship between the Present 
 and the Past in the way of ancestry and descent, which his 
 torians so carefully overlook. Yesterday is commonly looked 
 upon and written about as if of no kin to to-day, though the 
 one is legitimate child of the other, and has its veins filled 
 with the same blood. And the chapter about Alice and the 
 Carpenter, Salem, which would not even allow you so much 
 as Scotland gave Burns, will build you a monument yet for 
 having shown that she did not hang her witches for nothing." 
 
200 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 In May, 1851, Hawthorne s second daughter, Rose, was 
 born. Now that the book was out of the way, the happy life 
 of his Lenox home filled his thoughts; for four months he did 
 practically nothing but play with his children, making boats 
 and kites for them, taking them fishing, and trying to teach 
 them to swim. Of older folks, he saw most Herman Mel 
 ville, and others sought him; but his interest was in the chil 
 dren, and it is not surprising that he next wrote for them. 
 The Wonder Book, a collection of Greek stories retold for 
 boys and girls, was written between the end of May and the 
 first of July; before it was in the printer s hands, he says, Una 
 and Julian " could repeat the greater part of it by heart, from 
 hearing it read so often." The character of the volume was 
 well described in a letter to the publisher in May: "I mean to 
 write, within six weeks or two months next ensuing, a book of 
 stories made up of classical myths. The subjects are: The 
 Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch, Pandora s Box, The 
 Adventure of Hercules in quest of the Golden Apples, Bel- 
 lerophon and the Chimaera, Baucis and Philemon, Perseus 
 and Medusa; these, I think, will be enough to make up a vol 
 ume. As a framework, I shall have a young college student 
 telling these stories to his cousins and brothers and sisters, 
 during their vacations, sometimes at the fireside, sometimes 
 in the woods and dells. Unless I greatly mistake, these old 
 fictions will work up admirably for the purpose; and I shall 
 aim at substituting a tone in some degree Gothic or romantic, 
 or any such tone as may best please myself, instead of the 
 classic coldness which is as repellant as the touch of marble." 
 
 Hawthorne succeeded in his purpose; he did substitute a 
 "Gothic" tone, and he has been criticized for so doing. But 
 whatever may be the feelings of a Greek scholar on his use of 
 the myths, there are no two opinions as to the charm of the 
 book for young people. Its effect upon his own children has 
 been recorded, and thousands of others have also known it 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 261 
 
 by heart; it is a classic of childhood s literature. The average 
 reader neglects it in his estimate of Hawthorne s temper, or 
 we should less often hear the romancer spoken of as darkly 
 brooding, or as preoccupied with morbid thoughts; the happi 
 ness of his nature is here written unmistakably, as the energy 
 and sanity of it is written in his note-books. Two years 
 later Hawthorne wrote the Tanglewood Tales, a companion 
 series, which he thus described to R. H. Stoddard: "I have 
 finished the Tanglewood Tales, and they make a volume about 
 the size of the Wonder Book, consisting of six myths, the 
 Minotaur, the Golden Fleece, the story of Proserpine, etc., 
 etc., etc., done up in excellent style, purified from all moral 
 stains, re-created as good as new, or better, and fully equal, 
 in their own ways, to Mother Goose. I never did anything 
 else so well as these old baby stories." 
 
 Hawthorne s next work was the compilation of his third 
 volume of short stories, The Snow Image and Other Twice 
 Told Tales, which was published in the beginning of 1852. 
 The tales in this volume ranged in date from the beginning of 
 his literary career to the period when he wrote The Scarlet 
 Letter; it has been supposed that three of them, The Snow 
 Image, The Great Stone Face, and Ethan Brand, were in 
 tended originally for publication with the romance. The 
 volume not unnaturally makes a more miscellaneous im 
 pression than the first Tales or the Mosses; in general char 
 acteristics, however, it is thought of as their counterpart; 
 Hawthorne had nothing further to say in the short story. 
 
 On the 2ist of November, 1851, Hawthorne had moved 
 from Lenox to West Newton, a suburb of Boston, where his 
 sister-in-law, Mrs. Horace Mann, lived. The little red house 
 had grown too small, and the successful author was looking 
 for a permanent home for his family; the somewhat unat 
 tractive village he pitched upon served as a convenient point 
 of departure for the search. His son suggests also that as 
 
262 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 West Newton is near the scene of the Brook Farm experi 
 ment, and Hawthorne s mind was full of his next romance, 
 based on that experience, he may have wished to refresh his 
 memory of the locality; if there is any truth in the surmise, 
 it would indicate a departure from Hawthorne s usual method 
 of imaging his story. 
 
 The Blithedale Romance was published in 1852. It has at 
 tained much popularity, but is in all respects the feeblest of 
 Hawthorne s writings. For the material of it he went to his 
 Brook Farm days, intending to express his attitude toward 
 the professional reformer, a type for which he felt much dis 
 like. Practically everything in the novel is transferred, so 
 far as outward incident is concerned, from his note-books of 
 the community period; the life on the farm, with its initial 
 snow-storm, the talk about mesmerism, the little seamstress 
 from Boston who figures in the book as Priscilla all are easily 
 recognizable in their place. The finding of Zenobia s body 
 is the description of an experience just before Hawthorne 
 left Concord; on the night of July 9, 1843, as ne ten<s m tne 
 journal, Ellery Channing took him to search for the body of a 
 girl who had drowned herself in the river near by, and the 
 incidents and personages portrayed in the note-book reappear 
 in the romance almost unchanged. These are only the most 
 obvious sources of the book in Hawthorne s life; other par 
 allels can be found in great number. 
 
 One reason for the ease with which the sources can be iden 
 tified, is that the raw material, so to speak, has been presented 
 to us undeveloped and unfused. The most obvious fault of 
 the romance is that it is unwrought; for once Hawthorne s 
 art flagged. The plot is at best indefinite; what there is of it 
 is all in the twenty-second chapter, where Fauntleroy s his 
 tory is told, and the problem stated of his choice between 
 recognizing and therefore shaming his older daughter, Zeno- 
 bia, or keeping his other child, Priscilla, in obscure poverty. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 263 
 
 i 
 
 Hollingsworth s relation with Zenobia and Priscilla, or Wes- 
 tervelt s with Zenobia, hardly rise to the importance of plot; 
 they have no direction, and they no more than suggest a prob 
 lem, and they are left unexplained and capricious. That such 
 a story as is suggested in the history of Fauntleroy should go 
 undeveloped, implies an unusual lack of energy in Haw 
 thorne s imagination; the book is evidence of a weary mind 
 grappling with a difficult idea in vain. 
 
 But the weakness of the romance is due probably to its 
 subject. Hawthorne was at home only in the moral world, 
 and only in problems of such gravity as to involve the salva 
 tion of a soul. Here there is no sin, no ancient wrong, nothing 
 that connects itself with the idea of retribution; the evij studied 
 is a mistaken goal of life, in Hollingsworth s zeal for reform, 
 and the sad consequence of his errors is shown externally, in 
 the breaking up of Blithedale and the suicide of Zenobia, 
 not in the effect upon his soul or hers. ^Hollingsworth s re 
 pentance is incredible, for he had not consciously done wrong; 
 the change in attitude toward him is worthier of Dickens than 
 Hawthorne. And the reader is surprised, but not convinced, 
 at the statement that Coverdale loved Priscilla; having read 
 the story, which owes what vitality it has to Zenobia, we know 
 better. 
 
 Zenobia and Hollingsworth are the only two persons in 
 the book that challenge attention. Not unnaturally, it was 
 thought when the romance appeared that the heroine was 
 Margaret Fuller, who had indeed been associated with the 
 Brook Farm movement. Hawthorne denied that he had used 
 her for a lay-figure, yet here too we may be permitted to dis 
 trust his knowledge of himself. Zenobia is a splendid creature 
 of physique and impulse, a variant of Hester, or of Miriam in 
 The Marble Faun. Her character, like theirs, begins in 
 mystery; unlike theirs, it remains unexplained and unde 
 veloped to the end. The suggestion of the theatrical in her 
 
264 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 suicide, the false pastoral vein she was assuming even in that 
 moment of anguish, is in conflict with what else we know of 
 her frank character; and admirable as she is to the imagina 
 tion, she remains also unintelligible, though of her outward 
 history we know more than of either Hester or Miriam, whom 
 we learn to understand. Hollingsworth is evidently Haw 
 thorne s conception of a professional reformer. That he 
 should not feel with such a person, was inevitable. It is clear, 
 however, that he does injustice to the type. Artistically, the 
 character suffers as does Zenobia s, from incomplete develop 
 ment; we are not sure of his motives, and hardly follow him 
 in his repentance. That Hawthorne suspected the indefinite 
 drawing of this figure may be surmised from the judgment 
 pronounced upon him itself a confession of weakness from 
 the viewpoint of art: "The moral which presents itself to my 
 reflections, as drawn from Hollingsworth s character and 
 errors, is simply this, that, admitting what is called philan 
 thropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its 
 energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the in 
 dividual whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it 
 thus becomes. It ruins, or is fearfully apt to ruin, the heart, 
 the rich juices of which God never meant should be pressed 
 violently out, and distilled into alcoholic liquor by an unnat 
 ural process, but should render life sweet, bland, and gently 
 beneficent, and insensibly influence other hearts and other 
 lives to the same blessed end. I see in Hollingsworth an exem 
 plification of the most awful truth in Bunyan s book of such, 
 from the very gate of Heaven there is a by-way to the pit!" 
 What popularity The Blithedale Romance keeps, is evidence 
 largely of the hold of Hawthorne s other books upon the 
 readers of each generation. It has been suggested that it at 
 tracts through the interest in the community experiment of 
 which it mirrors the history. But to Young America Brook 
 Farm is already something less than an idea; the reader who 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 265 
 
 now comes fresh to the romance will probably find little in it 
 beside the strange but glorious figure of Zenobia, and the 
 pervading glamor of Hawthorne s fame. 
 
 IX 
 
 In June, 1852, the Hawthornes moved to the house in Con 
 cord which had been bought of Mr. Alcott, and which was to 
 become familiar to literature as The Wayside, the author s 
 permanent home. This house, with its twenty acres of land, 
 is about two miles from the Old Manse, where Hawthorne s 
 married life had begun. The early days in the new home 
 were saddened by the death of his sister Louisa, in a steam 
 boat disaster on the Hudson; with this large exception, life 
 began anew with promise of quiet happiness, and Hawthorne 
 could hardly have foretold how much wandering was still to 
 be his. He was ready to rest; the last romance had indicated 
 a wane of power, and he was clearly approaching the end of 
 his career, if not of his days. In this first summer in The Way 
 side he wrote a life of his old friend, Franklin Pierce, who was 
 a candidate for the Presidency. The biography was used as 
 campaign material, and Hawthorne was criticized for stoop 
 ing to such work, but he considered it not an unworthy thing 
 to use his genius in his friend s behalf. Upon his elec 
 tion Pierce, in turn, appointed Hawthorne to the Liverpool 
 consulate; Hawthorne accepted the offer, as an opportunity 
 for travel as well as service, and he arrived at his post in 
 Ny, 1853. 
 
 His life abroad is written in his note-books. He continued 
 in office until August 31, 1857, and for the next two years he 
 traveled and resided in Italy; after a second brief stay in Eng 
 land, to complete The Marble Faun, he returned to Concord 
 in June, 1860. All his important experiences are recorded in 
 his journal, the typical events and interests of official duty, 
 the sight-seeing, especially the acquaintance he made with art 
 
2 66 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 and architecture, and the contact in general with a foreign 
 life. Some passages in his account, such as the record of 
 Miss Delia Bacon, which appears, condensed, in Our Old 
 Home, in the Recollections of a Gifted Woman, have the acute 
 and illuminating qualities of his best work; indeed the Notes 
 of Travel, as the journal is now called, are in some respects 
 the equivalent of a romance. Hawthorne came to the old 
 countries with his nature made infinitely sensitive by practice 
 of his art, and by the discipline of life. His travel and sight 
 seeing was to him preeminently a spiritual experience, in 
 which his part was to submit his soul to the new influences, 
 and watch the result. The notes become therefore a kind of 
 lyrical romance, wherein the effect of living is contemplated 
 in a characteristically passive way. The record of the con 
 sulate is comparatively uninteresting; it is in the same key of 
 amused irony and final weariness as the briefer records of 
 official life in Boston or Salem. Literary people, with the ex 
 ception of the Brownings and some lesser folk, Hawthorne en 
 tirely failed to meet, though once he caught a glimpse of 
 Tennyson at an art exhibition. He communed as much as 
 possible with himself, and sought the less obvious but, for 
 him, richer aspects of old world experience, when he sought 
 it at all; if he visited an ancient church, it is said, he talked 
 with the sexton rather than with the vicar. But it was him 
 self he studied, rather than the place he visited. On a second 
 visit to York he writes: "We went to the cathedral, and no 
 sooner were we within it than we found how much our eyes 
 had recently been educated, by our greater power of appre 
 ciating this magnificent interior; for it impressed us both with 
 a joy that we never felt before. Julian felt it too, and insisted 
 that the cathedral must have been altered and improved 
 since we were last here. But it is only that we have seen much 
 splendid architecture since then, and so have grown in some 
 degree fitted to enjoy it." 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 267 
 
 It has been said that Hawthorne s remarks upon art and 
 architecture do not show much insight. Without question he 
 was an amateur in those fields, and his opinions frequently, 
 if not always, disclose narrow judgment and perhaps misun 
 derstanding of the form of expression. But if his remarks do 
 not illuminate art, they do illuminate life; his wizard percep 
 tions of values of character are written at their best in chance 
 remarks upon what he sees in the galleries, or upon some fine 
 ruin. When he reaches Rome he writes, " Whatever beauty 
 there may be in a Roman ruin is the remnant of what was 
 beautiful originally; whereas an English ruin is more beauti 
 ful often in its decay than even it was in its primal strength. 
 If we ever build such noble structures as these Roman ones, 
 we can have just as good ruins, after two thousand years, in 
 the United States; but we never can have a Furness Abbey or 
 a Kenilworth." Still more acute, perhaps because the sub 
 ject is more directly human, is his comment upon the Ma 
 donnas of medieval art: "Seeing the many pictures of Holy 
 Families, and the Virgin and Child, which have been painted 
 for churches and convents, the idea occurs, that it was in this 
 way that the poor monks and nuns gratified, as far as they 
 could, their natural longing for earthly happiness. It was 
 not Mary and her heavenly Child that they really beheld, or 
 wished for; but an earthly mother rejoicing over her baby, 
 and displaying it probably to the world as an object worthy to 
 be admired by kings, as Mary does in the Adoration of the 
 Magi." 
 
 In spite of its length one other passage deserves quotation, 
 for the fruitfulness of its suggestion; the ideas are not new, but 
 they come with strong appeal through the medium of Haw 
 thorne s deep nature: "I have a haunting doubt of the value 
 of portrait-painting; that is to say, whether it gives you a 
 genuine idea of the person purporting to be represented. I 
 do not remember ever to have recognized a man by having 
 
2 68 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 previously seen his portrait. ... It seems to be the aim of 
 portrait-painters generally, especially of those who have been 
 most famous, to make their pictures as beautiful and noble 
 as can anywise consist with retaining the very slightest re 
 semblance to the person sitting to them. They seldom attain 
 even the grace and beauty which they aim at, but only hit 
 some temporary or individual taste. Vandyke, however, 
 achieved graces that rise above time and fashion, and so did 
 Sir Peter Lely, in his female portraits; but the doubt is, 
 whether the works of either are genuine history. ... I ob 
 serve, furthermore, that a full-length portrait has seldom face 
 enough; not that it lacks its fair proportion by measurement, 
 but the artist does not often find it possible to make the face 
 so intellectually prominent as to subordinate the figure and 
 drapery. Vandyke does this, however. In his pictures of 
 Charles I, for instance, it is the melancholy grace of the visage 
 that attracts the eye, and it passes to the rest of the composi 
 tion only by an effort." 
 
 Without this extended experience of works of art, Haw 
 thorne would hardly have written The Marble Faun. The 
 four years in England were a sort of preparation for what he 
 was to find in Italy. The journal records the stay in Paris and 
 the trip through France; then came four months in Rome; and 
 then Hawthorne leased the villa of Montalito on the hill of 
 Bellosguardo, near Florence. The old house, "big enough to 
 quarter a regiment, and so mysterious in some of its parts 
 that it seemed haunted, was fit scene for the writing of a ro 
 mance. Here The Marble Faun was begun, and carried on 
 with only such interruptions as came of visits to the Brown 
 ings, or to Powers, the sculptor, or to the galleries. The note 
 books for this period are very full, and must have claimed 
 much time. 
 
 At the end of the residence in Florence the Hawthornes re 
 turned to Rome, where Una fell ill of a fever, and all but died. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 269 
 
 Somewhat unnerved by this experience, the family returned 
 to England, through France, and at Whitby and Redcar and 
 Leamington, successive stopping-places, the romance was 
 continued, and finished on November 8, 1859. The follow 
 ing spring it was published. 
 
 If The Marble Faun be not Hawthorne s best story, as it 
 certainly is not, it is most characteristic of his mind. Though 
 laid in a foreign scene, and describing a foreign city and its 
 art with a minuteness that renders it adaptable as a guide 
 book, it is peculiarly the product of that side of the Puritan 
 nature which contemplates life s influence upon the soul. 
 This is Hawthorne s distinct field, and the treatment of his 
 theme is as remarkably his own. For subject there is a past 
 crime or wrong, wherein Miriam is implicated; this secret is 
 left unexplained, as Hester s first love for Dimmesdale is un- 
 portrayed. There is an outward symbol, around which the 
 story circles, the statue of the Faun. There is a crime com 
 mitted within the limits of the story, and its results, in the souls 
 of the guilty and innocent alike, are the central theme. 
 
 The effect of sin is the subject in all of Hawthorne s great 
 stories; here sin is studied in its power to stain life, to rob it of 
 innocence. Donatello and Hilda, in different ways almost 
 in different worlds are ignorant of sin. In Donatello the 
 impulsive crime develops his nature, so that, paradoxical as 
 it seems, through it he becomes humanized, a living soul. 
 Upon the innocent Hilda also the crime falls as a great ex 
 perience, if not an ennobling one. But the influence of the 
 murder is shown most in the shadow it lays over the joy of 
 youth. The fable of Donatello s ancestry serves to explain 
 that marvelous understanding he has of birds and animals, 
 through which he can inspire their confidence as though he 
 were one of their kind; this is the innocence of his character 
 as we first see it. Like Satyrane, in The Faerie Queene, whose 
 ancestry is similar to his own, Donatello is very brother to all 
 
270 
 
 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 harmless, soulless creatures. His crime comes home to him 
 when he calls to the wood creatures as of old, and they will 
 not approach his blood-stained hands. "They know it!" he 
 repeated, trembling. "They shun me! All nature shrinks 
 from me, and shudders at me! I live in the midst of a curse, 
 that hems me round with a circle of fire! No innocent thing 
 can come near me." In Hilda s character the effect of 
 the murder is more narrowly Puritanical, burdening her 
 conscience with sin not hers, destroying in part her de 
 light in beauty, and substituting a deeper need of moral 
 truth. 
 
 Of the other two persons in the small group of the tragedy, 
 Kenyon is another version of Coverdale, in The Blithedale 
 Romance, he is a shadow of Hawthorne himself, looking 
 upon life and studying it, but not greatly living it. Miriam is 
 a nobler Zenobia, or a less womanly Hester, as one chooses to 
 regard her. She rises above Zenobia through the superior 
 coherence of her nature, and she gains importance from her 
 secret past and her responsibility for the murder. That she 
 ever rises out of her misery, as Hester rose, is not stated, and 
 her fate is the more tragic, since her love is an evil gift for 
 Donatello, and she feels it to be so. 
 
 The sequel of the story is uncertain, as are the conditions 
 from which the plot rises; Donatello languishes in his prison, 
 and Miriam, no less unhappy, wanders at large. Kenyon and 
 Hilda are married, but they stand on the edge of the real 
 story, and only Hilda is involved in it. Thin and unreal as 
 the tale may seem, "artfully and airily removed from our 
 mundane sphere," as its author hoped, it has power to grip 
 imaginative readers with its central focus upon the soul, 
 fresh-stained with sin. Like all of Hawthorne s major work, 
 it has a sad outlook. The sin is not forgiven; only the inno 
 cent Hilda knows the power of absolution. The romance is 
 an old man s book, which views youth with affection and re- 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 271 
 
 gret, noting its swiftly earned experience and sorrow. "The 
 world grows old, and growing old, grows sad." 
 
 X 
 
 In June, 1860, Hawthorne took up his life again at Con 
 cord, enlarged his house, renewed old friendships, and en 
 joyed the honor that comes at the end of a worthy career. His 
 career was indeed at an end. He published in 1863 a portion 
 of his notes on England in a volume called Our Old Home, 
 and he contributed a not very happy article on the war, to the 
 A tlantic Monthly, but his power was gone. Almost against his 
 will he set to work at a new story; The Dolliver Romance, its 
 final form, is only the fragment of an attempt. Although the 
 theme had been in his mind for years, a sense of his incapacity 
 to finish it held him back. His letters to his publisher, Field, 
 show how dark the presentiment was. "There is something 
 preternatural," he says, "in my reluctance to begin. I linger 
 at the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable 
 phantasms to be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given 
 me the faculty of writing a sunshiny book." A little later he 
 says, "I don t see much probability of my having the first 
 chapter of the Romance ready so soon as you want it. There 
 are two or three chapters ready to be written, but I am not 
 yet robust enough to begin, and I feel as if I should never 
 carry it through." Still later he puts his fears into stronger 
 terms: "I hardly know what to say to the public about this 
 abortive Romance, though I know pretty well what the case 
 will be. I shall never finish it. ... I cannot finish it unless 
 a great change comes over me; and if I make too great an 
 effort to do so, it will be my death." 
 
 Somehow it does not surprise us that Hawthorne had this 
 eery foreknowledge of his end. His genius had dwelt so much 
 among the shadows of life that the last great shadow found 
 him ready and unafraid. He grew very quiet but very cheer- 
 
272 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 ful too, as though he wished to comfort the affectionate house 
 hold for the grief soon to come. Once he was persuaded to 
 visit Holmes, and his friend was frightened at his condition, 
 so serious did it seem to the trained physician. Yet the dis 
 ease was baffling; it appeared to be connected with the brain; 
 it seemed at times to be connected more closely with the 
 spirit, as though Hawthorne were tired of this world or had 
 not the will to live. 
 
 At the end of March he was persuaded to undertake a 
 Southern journey with his old friend and publisher, W. D. 
 Ticknor, who wrote daily letters to Mrs. Hawthorne about 
 the invalid s progress. But the journey came to a most tragic 
 end in Philadelphia, where Ticknor suddenly died. Haw 
 thorne summoned all his strength to perform the duties nat 
 urally devolving upon him, but when the funeral had been 
 arranged for, and he returned to his home, he was clearly a 
 dying man. The shock of this terrible experience had com 
 pletely loosened his own hold on life. 
 
 As it was thought that nothing but change of scene could 
 keep him alive, his old friend Pierce planned a trip with him 
 into New Hampshire, which they undertook together in the 
 beginning of May, 1864. When Hawthorne said farewell to 
 his family he probably knew it was for the last time. On the 
 eighteenth of May the travelers reached Plymouth, and 
 stopped at the Pemigewasset House. The rest of the story is 
 told in Pierce s letter to Field, written on the nineteenth: "He 
 retired to rest soon after nine o clock, and soon fell into a 
 quiet slumber. In less than half an hour he changed his posi 
 tion, but continued to sleep. I left the door open between his 
 bedroom and mine our beds being opposite to each other 
 and was asleep myself before eleven o clock. The light 
 continued to burn in my room. At two o clock I went to 
 
 H s bedside; he was apparently in a sound sleep, and I 
 
 did not place my hand upon him. At four o clock I went into 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 273 
 
 his room again, and, as his position was unchanged, I placed 
 my hand upon him, and found that life was extinct. I sent, 
 however, immediately for a physician, and sent for Judge 
 Bell and Colonel Hibbard, who occupied rooms upon the 
 same floor, and near me. He lies upon his side, his position 
 so perfectly natural and easy, his eyes closed, that it is difficult 
 to realize, while looking upon his noble face, that this is death. 
 He must have passed from natural slumber to that from which 
 there is no waking without the slightest movement." 
 
 He was buried at Concord, in Sleepy Hollow, on the twenty- 
 fourth. At his grave stood practically all the men then living 
 who were famous in American literature Longfellow, Emer 
 son, Lowell, and Holmes. The scene is immortalized in Long 
 fellow s tender verses. The Rev. James Freeman Clarke, 
 who had married Hawthorne twenty-two years before, now 
 read the service over his grave, and among the flowers on his 
 coffin lay a wreath of apple-blossoms from the Old Manse, 
 and the manuscript of his unfinished romance. 
 
 In his special field Hawthorne has no rivals, nor even com 
 petitors; it is therefore hard to indicate his place in American 
 literature. He is concerned chiefly with the inner life of the 
 soul, and at his best h ranks high among all masters of spirit 
 ual tragedy. In so far as his preoccupation with spiritual 
 things distinguishes him, he represents American Puritan 
 ism; he does not, however, represent it completely. He fails 
 to portray its energy in action and its cheerfulness, the ele 
 ments of character that Mrs. Stowe delights in and illustrates. 
 That Hawthorne did not himself lack these human qualities 
 is proved by his journals and home records, which show him 
 to have been true man, courageous and lovable, and lighted 
 with the divine fire. 
 

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 
 
 WHEN Mrs. Stowe as a child first heard the Declaration of 
 Independence, the well-known phrases appealed to her, she 
 says, as though they still were a call to arms in the cause of 
 freedom. "The heroic element was strong in me, having 
 come down by ordinary generation from a long line of Puritan 
 ancestry, and just now it made me long to do something, I 
 knew not what : to fight for my country, or to make some dec 
 laration on my own account." 
 
 The longing to do something, to make some declaration on 
 their own account, was a familiar aspiration to the Beecher 
 race. They had the capacity of devotion to a cause, and the 
 two famous generations lived in years rich with opportunity 
 for their gift. In them the passion for reform seemed a nor 
 mal thing; it sprang from no ignorance, nor from a neurotic 
 dissatisfaction with life, but from the human sympathies of 
 great hearts in full-blooded bodies. Their lives were more 
 than busy, and their accomplishment was immense, yet one 
 is struck by the ease with which they worked; they were rapt 
 or troubled by their visions, but the practical in their hands 
 had a magic solution. Dreamers as they were, they were 
 accustomed to success. 
 
 Some of this impression of facility, of toil lightly borne, is 
 the effect of a strong vein of humor which made likeable the 
 firm Puritanical purposes of most of the family, a humor 
 somewhat like Lincoln s, perhaps belonging by a mysterious 
 compensation to many of the overworked spirits of those 
 
 275 
 
276 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 shadowed years. At least it is more a quality of modern 
 America than of Puritanism; it makes the Beechers those 
 who had it still seem of to-day, though their temper and 
 some of their ideas have the stamp of an early time. 
 
 Devotion to a cause; immense apparently facile accom 
 plishment; and humor; it is easy to see these traits in Har 
 riet Beecher Stowe. With but little amplification they would 
 serve as a complete summary of her character, and as an 
 adequate explanation of her career. She was altogether a 
 Beecher, the most fortunate child of the gifted family, for 
 tunate in her inheritance, in her opportune service, and in her 
 reward. 
 
 Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born June 14, 1811, at 
 Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Lyman 
 Beecher, her mother his first wife, Roxana Foote. Of the 
 five older children, Catherine, the eldest, had most influence 
 on Harriet s character and career. The famous brother, 
 Henry Ward, was born in 1813. Her mother died when 
 Harriet was but four years old, yet her remarkable nature 
 was treasured in almost precocious memories. One suspects 
 that the sweetness in the children s character was the mother s 
 gift, as one recalls the incident of the prize tulip bulbs which 
 the children ate for onions, and their mother s gentle dealing 
 with them. When she died, Henry was found digging im 
 petuously in the garden, as he explained, "going to Heaven 
 to find mamma." Mrs. Stowe herself records that what 
 Augustine St. Clare says in Uncle Tom s Cabin of his mother s 
 influence, applies absolutely to Roxana Foote and her chil 
 dren. 
 
 After her mother s death Harriet was taken to visit her 
 grandmother at Nut Plains, near Guilford, Connecticut. 
 The visit was remembered for the influence of her aunt 
 Harriet Foote, a person of pronounced character, devoted to 
 the teachings of the English Church and the Declaration of 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 277 
 
 Independence. Strength of character seems to have come to 
 Mrs. Stowe from both sides of the family. She was made to 
 stand up with her cousin Mary and the black servant girl and 
 the bound boy, and recite the catechism; it struck her child 
 ish observation that the two servants stood behind her cousin 
 and herself, because, as her aunt said, they should "order 
 themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters. " The 
 other memory of this long winter visit was of her grand 
 mother s familiarity with the Bible. Mrs. Foote s reading 
 was of that sturdy old-fashioned kind that found pleasure in 
 Dr. Johnson s works, next to religious books; and the child 
 remembered the vividness with which the characters lived 
 before her grandmother, as though they were personal ac 
 quaintances of hers. 
 
 These first years of Harriet s life reached their natural 
 climax in her discovery of books. She early learned to read, 
 and her curiosity was immense. Her father s library, for 
 biddingly theological, was romantic at least to the eye; she 
 had that visual memory of books, of " their friendly, quiet 
 faces," which marks the born reader. Her patriotic fervor 
 was fed early by Cotton Mather s Magnolia " stories that 
 made me feel the very ground I trod on to be consecrated by 
 some special dealing of God s Providence." And one day 
 she found, at the bottom of a barrel of old sermons, a copy 
 of the Arabian Nights, which opened to her once for all a 
 world of pure imagination. 
 
 In 1817 Lyman Beecher married Miss Harriet Porter, of 
 Portland, Maine. His family were fortunate in their step 
 mother. She was a conscientious woman, and reinforced 
 the seriousness of purpose which already distinguished the 
 Beecher tradition. Her first child, Frederick, born in 1818, 
 died two years later. Isabella was born in 1822, and became 
 Harriet s especial care; the thought that she was no longer the 
 youngest girl in the family matured her, and from this time 
 
278 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 she seems to have shown the precocious side of her genius. 
 Much of her rapid development was due to her teacher in 
 English at the Litchfield Academy, John Brace, who had 
 unusual success in teaching his pupils to write. His secret 
 apparently was to give the children something to say, to in 
 spire them with ideas and enlarge those they had. Under 
 such constructive training it is little wonder that a child of 
 real genius should advance rapidly, but the essay that Harriet 
 wrote when twelve years old and read in public at the school 
 exhibition, on the question " Can the Immortality of the Soul 
 be proved by the light of Nature," is still an astonishing pro 
 duction. The Beecher facility marks the flowing style; the 
 clearness and energy of the argument, and above all the strong 
 oratorical element in the composition, are significant of one 
 destined, like all her race, to plead a cause. 
 
 From 1824 to 1832 Harriet spent most of her time with her 
 sister Catherine, who had established a school in Hartford. 
 The years were outwardly quiet, but they saw Harriet through 
 one of those religious crises that a sensitive nature in those 
 days was likely to suffer. Her naturally bright nature was 
 set, by the clumsy questions of a well-meaning pastor, to con 
 sider whether, if the universe were destroyed, she could be 
 happy with God alone, and whether God was not justified in 
 leaving her to be miserable in her sins. The result was in 
 tensified by her sensitive imagination, and these years were 
 clouded for her, till with the wise help of her sister Catherine 
 and her brother Edward, she assured herself in a sweeter 
 theology. 
 
 In the meantime the family had left Litchfield. In 1826 
 Dr. Beecher had become pastor of the Hanover Street Church, 
 in Boston. In 1832 he removed to Cincinnati, as President 
 of the Lane Theological Seminary, and Harriet and Catherine 
 joined the family there. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 279 
 
 II 
 
 Lane Seminary was located at Walnut Hills, a pleasant 
 spot well out of Cincinnati, and in seasons of rain and muddy 
 roads, almost inaccessible; but the distance proved later an 
 advantage, when it served as a defense against the riotous 
 pro-slavery mobs in the city. The Seminary was poorly 
 equipped in all but the men who conducted it; they carried 
 into a rough country in wild days the best of Puritan tradi 
 tion, in religion and democracy, and the Beecher capacity for 
 success in practical ways seems to have been with the whole 
 company. 
 
 It was at Walnut Hills that Harriet Beecher made the seri 
 ous beginning of her writing, and the life itself there had the 
 traits that were to color her genius. It was essentially a heroic 
 life, a true missionary effort to forward righteousness; it was 
 so far out of her youthful memories of New England as to 
 have in it some strain of missionary exile, and to give a halo 
 to the life left behind. Harriet s letters at first show the in 
 tellectual stimulus of the new experiences; she was busy in the 
 school that Catherine and she were starting, and rough as the 
 world about her seemed, it was at least novel. But there was 
 little in the life to sustain such a nature when the novelty 
 should cease, and the reaction came, apparently, in 1833. 
 
 It was in writing and in literary pursuits that she found her 
 recreation. The Western Monthly, a local magazine, offered a 
 prize of fifty dollars for the best short story. Harriet Beecher 
 won it with the story Uncle Lot, later republished in the 
 volume of New England sketches known as The Mayflower. 
 Most of these pieces were written for the Semi-Colon Club, 
 a literary society that took its name from their half-Columbus- 
 like zest in the discovery of new worlds of pleasure. The 
 whole volume represents a loving memory of New England 
 scenes idealized perhaps by exile, and a complete devotion 
 
280 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 to New England ideas, both traits constant in her later 
 work; and in detail the stories, though immature, are signi 
 ficant in many ways of the sort of genius that was to make her 
 fame. 
 
 (jjncle Lot is a realistic study of New England character, 
 mingled with much religious idealism, almost propaganda. 
 The combination of realism and idealism remains in all Mrs. 
 Stowe s writing, but in this first story they are more noticeable 
 because they seem incongruous; they do not blend in the 
 slightest, and for the modern reader at least the religious 
 strain is unconvincing. It is not difficult to see the origin of 
 this double pattern in Mrs. Stowe s work. The idealizing 
 tendency, usually religious, was her inheritance, and the prod 
 uct of her surroundings; it had its own appeal to the readers 
 of the time. The realistic element springs from her proper 
 genius, a peculiar ability to transfer life about her to paper, 
 with the fidelity that comes from affection rather than from 
 analytical stuoV.) ^Vliat she herself would probably have 
 thought most Important in Uncle Lot, is the sudden conver 
 sion of the somewhat shallow and volatile James Benton to 
 the Christian Ministry. But her genius is shown in the 
 clever touches of New England peculiarity the typical post- 
 office; the fixed, conservative life of the village; the old people, 
 who grow as old as they can, and then last; and the character 
 of Uncle Lot himself, however crudely sketched his rough 
 rebellion against any apparent cooperation with God or man, 
 and most of all, his great sorrow at his son s death. Imma 
 ture as the story is, and alienating as its religiosity now seems, 
 it interests by its truth, its fervor, and its dignity; the heroic 
 flame already burns in it. Technically its cleverness is largely 
 verbal; the structure is amateurish, but the language is deft 
 and fluent^ 
 
 The same criticism applies to all the pieces in the volume 
 for example, to the sketches called The Sabbath, a series of 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 281 
 
 pictures designed to show the bad results of departure from 
 the Puritan observance of the day. Here again the least doc 
 trinal section is the best the picture of the grim discipline 
 of godliness that the children feared, dreading the Saturday 
 sunset, and finding their first theological hopelessness in the 
 promise that heaven would be an eternal Sabbath. These 
 pictures show Mrs. Stowe s chief trait that love of life, of all 
 living things, that made realism with her a thing of zest and 
 delight, and kept even her religious idealism human. She 
 can portray the essential charm and value of Uncle Phineas* 
 rigid observance, but she sees with as keen eyes the useless- 
 ness of it for children, and she praises it on other grounds. 
 "The slave of worldliness, who is driven, by perplexing busi 
 ness or adventurous speculation, through the hours of a half- 
 kept Sabbath to the fatigues of another week, might envy the 
 unbroken quiet, the sunny tranquillity, which hallowed the 
 weekly rest of my uncle." Puritanism fills the picture, but 
 it is a spirit that flames, a quiet that is rapture not the still 
 mellow world of Hawthorne s art. 
 
 Ill 
 
 On January 6, 1836, Harriet Beecher married Professor 
 Calvin E. Stowe, her father s friend and colleague in Lane 
 Seminary. The following summer he spent in Europe as 
 school commissioner of Ohio, while she paid a brief visit to 
 the East, that served to freshen her enthusiasm for the cause of 
 enlightenment and education. On Professor Stowe s return 
 Lane Seminary rapidly became a center of the antislavery 
 movement in the West, and in spite of increasing household 
 cares, Mrs. Stowe had her part in every exciting event. It 
 has remained a marvel that she could share the intellectual 
 life about her and continue her writing in the midst of homely 
 tasks that would have worn out many a stronger woman. The 
 six children that were born to her in the next twelve years 
 
282 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 made literary composition truly a matter of heroism. A 
 friend describes a typical scene, in which Mrs. Stowe was per 
 suaded to complete a story by dictation, with a baby on her 
 lap, a great baking in process in the kitchen, a "new girl" to 
 be looked after, and preparations for house-cleaning to be 
 made. 
 
 "In ten minutes she was seated; a table with flour, rolling 
 pin, ginger, and lard on one side, a dresser with eggs, pork, 
 and beans and various cooking utensils on the other, near 
 her an oven heating, and beside her a dark-skinned nymph, 
 awaiting orders. 
 
 " Here, Harriet, said I, you can write on this atlas in 
 your lap; no matter how the writing looks, I will copy it. 
 
 " Well, well, she said, with a resigned sort of amused look. 
 Mina, you may do what I tell you, while I write a few 
 minutes, till it is time to mould up the bread. Where is the 
 inkstand ? 
 
 " Here it is, close by, on the top of the tea-kettle, said I. 
 
 "At this, Mina giggled, and we both laughed to see her 
 merriment at our literary proceedings. I began to overhaul 
 the portfolio to find the right sheet. 
 
 " Here it is, said I. Here is Frederick sitting by Ellen, 
 glancing at her brilliant face, and saying something about 
 "guardian angel," and all that you remember? 
 
 " Yes, yes, said she, falling into a muse, as she attempted 
 to recover the thread of her story. 
 
 " * Ma am, shall I put the pork on the top of the beans? 1 
 asked Mina. 
 
 " Come, come, said Harriet, laughing, You see how it is. 
 Mina is a new hand and cannot do anything without me to 
 direct her. We must give up the writing for to-day. 
 
 " No, no; let us have another trial. You can dictate as 
 easily as you can write. Come, I can set the baby on this 
 clothes-basket and give him some mischief or other to keep 
 him quiet; you shall dictate and I will write. Now, this is the 
 place where you left off; you were describing the scene be 
 tween Ellen and her lover; the last sentence was, " Borne down 
 by the tide of agony, she leaned her head on her hands, the 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 283 
 
 tears streamed through her fingers, and her whole frame shook 
 with convulsive sobs." What shall I write next ? 
 
 " Mina, pour a little milk into this pearlash, said Harriet. 
 
 " Come/ said I, The tears streamed through her fingers, 
 and her whole frame shook with convulsive sobsl What 
 next? 
 
 "Harriet paused and looked musingly out of the window, 
 as she turned her mind to her story. You may write now, 
 said she, and she dictated as follows: 
 
 " Her lover wept with her, nor dared he again touch the 
 point so sacredly guarded Mina, roll that crust a little 
 thinner. He spoke in soothing tones Mina, poke the coals 
 in the oven. 
 
 ******** 
 
 " I know my duty to my children. I see the hour must 
 come. You must take them, Henry; they are my last earthly 
 comfort. 
 
 " Ma am, what shall I do with these egg-shells and all this 
 truck here ? interrupted Mina. 
 
 " Put them in the pail by you, answered Harriet. 
 
 " They are my last earthly comfort, said I, What next? 
 
 "She continued to dictate, 
 
 " You must take them away. It may be perhaps it must 
 be that I shall soon follow, but the breaking heart of a wife 
 still pleads "a little longer, a little longer." 
 
 " How much longer must the gingerbread stay in? in 
 quired Mina. 
 
 " Five minutes, said Harriet. 
 
 " A little longer, a little longer I repeated in a dolorous 
 tone, and we burst into a laugh." 
 
 Yet in spite of these discouragements, it was during the 
 early days of her busy married life that Mrs. Stowe saw her 
 destiny as a literary woman unfold, and her family came to 
 look upon her as their prophetess with the gift of written 
 speech. In 1842 her husband wrote to her: "My dear, you 
 must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book of fate. 
 Make all your calculations accordingly. Get a good stock of 
 health and brush up your mind. Drop the E. out of your 
 
284 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 name. It only encumbers it and interferes with the flow and 
 euphony. Write yourself fully and always Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, which is a name euphonious, flowing, and full of mean 
 ing." 
 
 This gradual sense of her destiny as a literary woman was 
 an important preparation for the writing of Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin; Mrs. Stowe came to her great book with some con 
 sciousness of professional skill; its success was as little a 
 matter of accident as such things can be. Indeed, it seems 
 now as if Mrs. Stowe s life from the year 1833, before her 
 marriage, was one rich preparation for her masterpiece. In 
 that year she made a visit to Kentucky, in a slave-holding 
 homestead that was the model of the Shelby s place in the 
 novel. Her companion during the visit said afterward that 
 Harriet apparently did not notice much that happened; she 
 sat as though in thought most of the time. But many inci 
 dents found their place later in Uncle Tom s Cabin, incidents 
 that she must have absorbed with that completeness with 
 which a mind in a high state of emotion appropriates the most 
 trivial circumstance. 
 
 This Southern visit gave Mrs. Stowe practically her only 
 pleasant glimpse of slavery, and it proves her breadth of mind 
 that she could make so much that is happy in her novel out 
 of experience so scanty. Her chief knowledge of slavery was 
 gained in the bitter struggle in the West, where the Southern 
 colonists advanced their cause by riot and murder, and where 
 the pitiful efforts of black fugitives to gain their freedom was 
 a familiar occurrence before her very eyes. It was the hunted 
 slave, or the family separated by legal sale, that took hold of 
 Mrs. Stowe s imagination, and became the main theme of her 
 book; this was what she knew most directly of the slave sys 
 tem. In the little school that she conducted for her own 
 family, she included some colored children, who had no other 
 opportunity for instruction. One day the mother of one of 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 285 
 
 these brought the startling news that the child, never having 
 been emancipated, was to be sold at auction to settle an es 
 tate. The money was quickly raised to redeem the child, but 
 the incident left in Mrs. Stowe s memory one at least of the 
 horrible realities of slavery. In 1839 she had for a servant a 
 young colored girl, who had been brought by her mistress 
 from Kentucky into Ohio, and left there. By the Ohio law 
 she was free. It was learned, however, that the girl s former 
 master was about to seize her and take her back into slavery. 
 Professor Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher armed themselves 
 one night and drove the girl to safety. The farmer with whom 
 she was left, John Van Zandt, had been a slave-owner in 
 Kentucky, but had freed his slaves and removed to Ohio, 
 where he became the protector of such fugitives as this girl; 
 he was the original of John Van Trompe in chapter IX of 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin, and the sheltering of Eliza there de 
 scribed is of course founded on this real incident. 
 
 But Mrs. Stowe was to know slavery in more fatal aspects. 
 A fierce war was waged by the pro-slavery mobs against 
 open advocates of emancipation, and the few courageous 
 editors who upheld the unpopular side were in danger of 
 their lives. The printing shops were burned, the presses de 
 stroyed, and the type thrown into the river. In Kansas the 
 free state settlers dredged for the type, as a matter of senti 
 ment, and loaded them in their guns. It was during this dan 
 gerous period of the attacks on the newspapers that Lane 
 Seminary, well known for its emancipation tendencies, was 
 indebted for its safety, as Mrs. Stowe says, to its distance from 
 the city, and to the depth and tenacity of Cincinnati mud. 
 Many good friends of the Seminary fared badly. Dr. Gama 
 liel Bailey had his printing office destroyed, and was " in 
 duced" to leave that part of the country. Mr. J. G. Birney, 
 his assistant, had been a property owner in Alabama, but had 
 liberated his slaves and had joined Dr. Bailey in founding 
 
286 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS - 
 
 their antislavery journal, the Philanthropist. Mrs. Stowe s 
 comment on the attacks on this paper shows her heroic vein, 
 the fighting spirit in which she and her family faced this 
 crisis, " For my part I can easily see how such proceedings 
 may make converts to abolitionism, for already my sympa 
 thies are strongly enlisted for Mr. Birney, and I hope he will 
 stand his ground and assert his rights. The office is fire 
 proof, and inclosed by high walls. I wish he would man it 
 with armed men and see what can be done. If I were a man I 
 would go, for one, and take good care of at least one window." 
 But for the Beechers the climax of these newspaper attacks 
 came with the murder of J. P. Lovejoy, the Illinois editor, who 
 was besieged in his office by a Missouri mob and shot. Mrs. 
 Stowe s brother, the Rev. Edward Beecher, was Lovejoy s 
 intimate friend, and at first it was falsely reported that he also 
 was killed. Hitherto the Beechers, though radically opposed 
 to slavery, had felt much of the prevalent caution towards the 
 out-and-out abolitionists; but this murder, so nearly concern 
 ing them, added flame to their ardor. Edward Beecher s 
 wife, who urged Mrs. Stowe to use her pen against slavery, 
 dated her own enthusiasm from this time; "I had been nour 
 ishing an antislavery spirit," she writes, "since Lovejoy was 
 murdered for publishing in his paper articles against slavery 
 and intemperance, when our home was in Illinois." 
 
 While these tragic experiences were preparing Mrs. Stowe 
 for her great task, she had been training her literary gift not 
 only by constant writing but by the best of reading. The 
 novels of Walter Scott had come into the Beecher family in a 
 somewhat dramatic manner, which Mrs. Stowe, a child at the 
 time, never forgot. In 1822 at the death of Professor Alexan 
 der Metcalf Fisher, of Yale, who had been engaged to Cather 
 ine Beecher, his library came to her, and Dr. Lyman Beecher 
 examined the books to see if they were "safe," for Pro 
 fessor Fisher was thought even by his betrothed to be theolog- 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 287 
 
 ically unsound. Among the books was a set of Scott, and Dr. 
 Beecher seems to have begun with Ivanhoe, for he suddenly 
 appeared with it in his hand, saying, "I have always said 
 that my children should not read novels, but they must read 
 these." The great romancer s stories of generous action 
 fitted well the peculiar genius of Mrs. Stowe; it would be in 
 teresting to know how deeply she was indebted to him for 
 the effectiveness of her scenes, the frequent realism of her 
 humor, the historical sentiment in such books as The Minis 
 ter s Wooing. In 1850, after the birth of her son Charles, she 
 read all of Scott s novels in order; a few months later she be 
 gan Uncle Tom s Cabin. 
 
 In 1843 The Mayflower, the collection of Mrs. Stowe s early 
 sketches, had been published by the Harpers. In September, 
 1849, Professor Stowe accepted a chair at Bowdoin College, 
 and his family removed to Brunswick in the next April, before 
 he himself was free to accompany them. The responsibil 
 ities and difficulties of moving into the new home fell on 
 Mrs. Stowe, and for a time she must have done little or no 
 writing. But the winter of 1850 brought forth Henry Clay s 
 compromise, which Daniel Webster defended on March 7 in 
 the speech so disastrous to his reputation in New England. 
 The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, by which citizens even 
 in free states were required to assist in the recovery of slave 
 " property," was the final wrong that kindled Mrs. Stowe s 
 indignation to a prophetic flame. It was at this time that Mrs. 
 Edward Beecher wrote to her, "Hattie, if I could use a pen 
 as you can, I would write something that would make this 
 whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." When 
 Mrs. Stowe came to these words in the letter, she rose to her 
 feet in sudden emotion and said, "I will write something: I 
 will if I live." This was in December. In February, 1851, 
 during the Communion Service at the college church, Mrs. 
 Stowe experienced an inspiration not perhaps unlike the sud- 
 
2 88 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 den visions of the old prophets; she saw the scene of Uncle 
 Tom s death, and the reality of it moved her to tears. On her 
 return to the house she wrote out the scene and read it to her 
 family. 
 
 From this germ the story grew rapidly, though the first 
 chapter was not completed for two months. The thorough 
 ness with which Mrs. Stowe mastered available documents on 
 the slavery question is shown in the Key to Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin, published a year after the novel. But more than the 
 gathering of documents went to the making of this book; the 
 theme possessed the heart of the writer so thoroughly that, 
 as she said, she could not control the story; it wrote itself. 
 When the first instalment appeared in the National Era, 
 June 5, 1851, Mrs. Stowe expected to write but a brief narra 
 tive, a few chapters. But the story unfolded itself, much as 
 Scott s best stories took their destinies into their own hands, 
 and the last instalment did not come until April i, 1852. The 
 National Era was a most proper medium for such a publica 
 tion; its editor was that Dr. Bailey whom the Beechers had 
 known in the stormy Ohio days, and who had been forced to 
 leave Cincinnati because of his antislavery writings. For the 
 story as a serial Mrs. Stowe received three hundred dollars. 
 On the thirteenth of March, 1852, Professor Stowe arranged 
 with John P. Jewett, a Boston publisher, for the appearance 
 of the novel in book form, and it was published on the twen 
 tieth of that month, before its last serial instalment had ap 
 peared. On the first day three thousand copies were sold; a 
 third edition was issued on the first of April; within the year 
 over three hundred thousand copies had been sold in America; 
 in England, where the book could not be protected by copy 
 right, eighteen different publishing houses were busy supply 
 ing the demand during the first year. In Great Britain and 
 the colonies the number of copies published was estimated at 
 one and a half millions. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 289 
 
 IV 
 
 The purpose of Uncle Tom s Cabin was to attack slavery, 
 not to attack the South. Mrs. Stowe had the wisdom to see in 
 the institution a national rather than a sectional wrong; much 
 of the power of the book lay in this breadth of view. It is use 
 less to deny that a story written under such circumstances and 
 with such intentions is a "purpose" novel, but Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin differs from others of the kind by so much restraint 
 and so evident a desire for fairness, that it is almost tempting 
 now to consider it a realistic study of life among the lowly, be 
 longing in the broad humanitarian movement of the century. 
 Remembering the violent aspects that the slavery cause had 
 worn before Mrs. Stowe s eyes in Ohio, and considering the 
 mass of unpleasant material she had in the documents pub 
 lished as the key to the novel, we must admire the gentle 
 ness with which the Southern slave-owner is pictured, and the 
 skill with which the significant wrongs of slavery are distin 
 guished and softened. Mrs. Stowe felt, she says, that to por 
 tray the institution as it existed would make the book too 
 terrible to read; she therefore chose to represent only its 
 brighter aspects. That she was in command of the worst 
 facts of slavery is undeniable, yet the book makes its appeal 
 through emotional suggestion, rather than by morbid exhibi 
 tions of horror; how much it gains by this reserve need not be 
 pointed out. The same artistic impulse, or political wisdom, 
 whichever it was, made the best characters St. Clare, the 
 Shelbys Southerners, and the villain Legree, a Northerner. 
 Perhaps the most surprising thing in the book, considering 
 Mrs. Stowe s New England origin, is the fidelity with which 
 she portrays in Miss Ophelia the New Englanders lack of 
 practical charity, which prevented them from understanding 
 or caring for the negro in the concrete, although mentally they 
 were devoted to the ideal of emancipation. If Uncle Tom s 
 
290 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Cabin helped to bring on the great war, at least it recorded^ 
 the Northern inability to understand the negro, and the 
 Southern appreciation of him, which seems to hold true to this 
 day. Mrs. Stowe s own readiness to treat the enslaved race 
 as equals was exceptional; in the veracious portrait of Miss 
 Ophelia she sought to rouse the majority of Northerners, 
 whose philanthropy for the negro, then as now, was at some 
 thing more than arm s-length; the contrast to Miss Ophelia s 
 failure to improve the negro "by dint of the utmost hammer 
 ing and vehement effort" she intended to be Eva, who won 
 the allegiance of the servants by love. 
 
 Among the Southerners themselves Mrs. Stowe makes a 
 sharp distinction, all the sharper because in the simple art of 
 the book there is place only for broad contrasts. St. Clare and 
 his brother are the clearest illustrations, the one ideally dem 
 ocratic in spirit, though without energy to act, the other aristo 
 cratic and hard in temper, with the hasty pride of one who fits 
 in blindly with his own days. It is significant that the evil in 
 his brother s character was fostered, St. Clare thought, by the 
 renegade Vermonter, Stubbs, who as his father s overseer had 
 taught the family how to drive slaves. The contrast between 
 the brothers is continued in their children. Eva, inheriting 
 the best of her father s character and nothing of her mother s, 
 is indeed a spoiled child, but uses her privileges in spontaneous 
 acts of kindness. Henrique shows the worst effect of slave- 
 owning on the character of children; naturally more generous 
 than his father, he is fast becoming as irresponsible a despot 
 in his small world, impatient and cruel with his servants, 
 though charmingly chivalrous toward his girl cousin- the 
 very paradox of the old Southern character. It is obvious that 
 in Eva Mrs. Stowe was portraying an ideal character; yet she 
 as well as Henrique suffers from the slave system. She is a 
 spoiled child, as the best child would be with slaves to com 
 mand, and her very goodness, as her worldly mother pointed 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 291 
 
 out, made spoiled children of the slaves. Perhaps the essen 
 tial wrong of the system is here more clear than Mrs. Stowe 
 designed. The division of opinion between the St. Clare 
 brothers is paralleled in other places, in the two clergymen 
 on the Mississippi boat, one of whom quotes " Cursed be 
 Canaan" and the other the golden rule, and in the second 
 conversation on the boat, where the presence of the slaves 
 furnishes a natural subject for discussion and opinion. But 
 in these cases the difference of view is simply stated, not made 
 the basis for character portraits. 
 
 The structure of the novel shows the same restraint and 
 breadth that distinguish its general attitude. The plot is 
 double, yet very simple. The two main horrors of slavery, 
 the two common incidents in it that Mrs. Stowe rightly 
 thought would appeal to the sympathy of the whole world, 
 were the separation of slave families by sale, and the hunting 
 of fugitive slaves. The first of these causes is really the heart 
 of the book, for it is the sale of Eliza and her boy and the 
 threatened sale of her husband that persuades them to run 
 away; none of the chief characters in the story become fugi 
 tives simply for their freedom. But although the separation 
 of the slave family is the initial subject, it was the fugitive 
 slave that Mrs. Stowe had perhaps her most immediate sym 
 pathy for; if men could actually see their fellows, as she had 
 seen them, in the desperate attempt to be free, their hearts 
 would be touched. It is hardly too much to say that the pur 
 pose of the book is contained in this account of the antiabo- 
 litionist senator in chapter IX: "His idea of a fugitive was 
 only an idea of the letters that spell the word, or, at the 
 most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a 
 stick and a bundle, with Ran away from the Subscriber 
 under it. The magic of the real presence of distress, the 
 imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the 
 despairing appeal of helpless agony, these he had never 
 
292 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a help 
 less mother, a defenceless child, like that one which was now 
 wearing his lost boy s little well-known cap." The fortunes 
 of Eliza and her husband are typical of the experience of those 
 human beings who could not bear to lose their children 
 through sale, and against whom the Fugitive Slave Act was 
 passed. The majority of the slave population, who sub 
 mitted to their lot with characteristic patience, are repre 
 sented by Uncle Tom. The irony of the situation for the 
 philanthropic master and mistress is that they are compelled 
 to sell their slaves to a man they despise. What might be the 
 fortune of any slave, no matter how faithful, under a system 
 which regarded him simply as property, was told in Tom s 
 life; his only alternative, flight, was represented in the story 
 of Eliza and George Harris. The two stories are thus bound 
 together logically, and artistically they have a kind of unity in 
 the beginning, where Tom and Eliza are sold from the same 
 place, and in the end, where Cassie, Tom s friend, turns out 
 to be Eliza s mother, and it is George Selby who discovers 
 the fact. 
 
 In this simple scheme Mrs. Stowe gives a picture of 
 slavery as an institution, of the condition to which all who 
 participate in it are reduced. When we consider the warmth 
 of her sympathies, we wonder that she did such justice to the 
 shortcomings of the negro race. To her mind slavery was 
 responsible for practically everything except color that dis 
 tinguished the black man from the white, yet her accuracy 
 of observation resulted in a portrait easily recognized as true, 
 though it might be explained by other causes than slavery. 
 It is significant that the slave who does not run away, but 
 submits even to torture with a quixotic patience, is the full- 
 blooded negro, Uncle Tom. It is he also who has most 
 religion. He is so far an ideal of what the full-blooded negro 
 might be, that even in the novel he is unique. Eliza and her 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 293 
 
 husband, Cassie and Madame de Thoux, all who show a 
 desire for independence and ability to get it, are more white 
 than black. Otherwise the slaves are degraded by their con 
 dition. St. Clare s servants are degraded by his mistaken 
 leniency, until even in the story they are insufferable. Le- 
 gree s slaves are turned into beasts by the evil influence of 
 his own character, so that Sambo and Quimbo and Cassie, 
 in different ways, are hideous products of what must have 
 been no uncommon tyranny. In the heartlessness of Legree s 
 black slaves toward each other, the mutual treachery of 
 Sambo and Quimbo, the satisfaction of the field hands when 
 Cassie was reduced to work among them, their delight at 
 the prospect of a slave hunt, in these traits of the negro 
 character Mrs. Stowe was dealing with the volatile childish 
 ness of the race, for which slavery perhaps is not wholly 
 responsible. The truth of the portraiture is more convincing 
 at this point than the direct indictment of the institution. 
 Sam and Andy, on Mrs. Shelby s place, are quite as irre 
 sponsible as Sambo and Quimbo, though their childlike 
 natures have been shielded from evil; their behavior in the 
 pursuit of Eliza, though it is goodhearted and in the end 
 proves her salvation, is yet of a levity to shock even Mrs. 
 Shelby, who sympathized with their intentions. The total 
 impression that the black race leaves in the story is of a 
 simple childishness, with the handicaps and compensations 
 of such undevelopment; and the artistic defect of the book 
 is that when Mrs. Stowe attributes all of that undevelop 
 ment to slavery she must leave her story and argue, and the 
 argument does not convince. This weakness is worst felt 
 in the last pages, where George Harris contemplates the 
 future of "his race"; the reader knows that Uncle Tom, not 
 he, is the representative of the negro, and as the story shows, 
 their two careers would be far apart, in either slavery or 
 freedom. It was this weakness in the story that Dickens 
 
294 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 criticized. " If I might suggest a fault in what has so charmed 
 me," he wrote, "it would be that you go too far and seek to 
 prove too much. The wrongs and atrocities of slavery are, 
 God knows, case enough. I doubt there being any warrant 
 for making out the African race to be a great race or for 
 supposing the future destinies of the world to lie in that 
 direction." 
 
 The irresponsibility of the negro character is portrayed 
 especially in Topsy, the whimsical problem who "just 
 growed." Perhaps no person in the book is more often 
 referred to. The contrast between the child and Miss Ophelia 
 is one of the best in the story, as it is not only striking in it 
 self but typical of the paralyzing astonishment that over 
 takes the Anglo-Saxon nature on its first experience of negro 
 ways. Topsy gains a certain interest from the large amount 
 of attention showered upon her by Eva and Miss Ophelia; 
 there is little in her nature but perversity, and the depth of 
 her affection for Eva does not convince the reader as readily 
 as it does Mrs. Stowe that she ever became a useful member 
 of society. 
 
 The problem of slavery was too real a thing, and had 
 come too near Mrs. Stowe s notice, for her to treat it other 
 wise than realistically. But the poetical, idealizing strain in 
 her genius, fostered by reading Scott, showed itself in those 
 parts of the story where she was drawing least on actual 
 experience. Cassie is of the race of Scott s wildly romantici 
 heroines Flora Mclvor and Norma; the mystery of her past, 
 her almost superhuman power, her astonishing influence ovef 
 Legree, the strain of insanity or fanaticism in her, are molded 
 from Scott s material by weaker hands. The one negro trait 
 she seems to possess is a love of masquerading and show ; she 
 makes the most of the garret mystery before she runs away 
 or rather, walks off for she is perfectly free to go and come at 
 all times, and apparently could have escaped when she would. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 295 
 
 But in spite of the childishness of her devices the bottle in 
 serted through the board to provide ghostly shrieks for Le- 
 gree s benefit, and the white sheet for midnight apparitions, 
 she is a striking figure, and represents the demonic strain in 
 the African, to which Mrs. Stowe recurred in Dred. It is to 
 the romantic quality of her imagination also that we owe the 
 two most stirring scenes in the book, Eliza s escape over the 
 ice, and the defeat of the pursuers among the rocks, when Tom 
 Loker was shot. Both incidents were founded on actual oc 
 currences; they are told, not only with a sympathy that makes 
 them seem perfectly real, but with an emotional elevation 
 which gives them the quality of romance. 
 
 Far more important than the indication of the negro taste 
 for the supernatural, the mysterious, is the varied portrayal 
 of the black man s capacity for religion. Uncle Tom s Cabin 
 is more than anything else a religious book. It was the au 
 thor s great pride that her story had been the means of saving 
 many souls. The religion of Eva may be rather lightly dis 
 missed by the modern reader; the death scene, like the death 
 of little Nell, made its own appeal to an earlier taste, which 
 now seems mawkish; and we object to the killing off of Eva 
 just for the religious effect, since there is no stronger reason 
 why she should die. But the religion of Uncle Tom is con 
 vincing throughout. It deepens as he suffers, and it gives 
 the book its point as a rebuke to the Christianity that held 
 men as other than immortal souls. Uncle Tom s death, like 
 Eva s, is necessary for the effect; without his torments as 
 proof of his faith he might have been somewhat of a bore; 
 even as it is, he is perhaps too perfect, too infallible, a 
 kind of negro Natty Bumpo, who has got religion; but Mrs. 
 Stowe knew only too well that the horror of his fate was based 
 on fact, not on literary effect, and she convinces us of the 
 genuineness of his religion. She is careful to distinguish be 
 tween the emotional, imaginative religion of the true negro, 
 
296 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 and the comparatively cold faith, even skepticism, of those of 
 mixed blood ; and perhaps the most solemn religious appeal is 
 made through the character of a white man, where St. Clare 
 is conscience-stricken by the description of the last judgment. 
 Breadth of view and charity in the treatment of an un 
 settled problem; truth in the portraiture of negro character, 
 with its faults as well as virtues; a sense of actuality in the 
 general representation of slavery; and a strong and genuine 
 religious feeling, these are the qualities that make Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin a great book. Its lack of literary subtlety has 
 been to its advantage; its simple structure is not too simple 
 for its direct message. To show American slavery as it was, 
 Mrs. Stowe said, was her purpose; but translated into specific 
 terms of her deep human interest, that meant to show the 
 slave as he was, in the tragedy of his divided family, in the 
 tragedy of his efforts for freedom, in the tragedy of his pa 
 tience. The picture she drew, whatever may be its literary 
 faults, has been generally accepted by mankind, and no other 
 portrait of the same subject is likely to take its place. 
 
 V 
 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin was received with fairness by many 
 Southerners, but it could not be expected that those who ear 
 nestly championed slavery would approve of it. As the influ 
 ence of the book gathered and made itself felt, a counter attack 
 formed rapidly. It was said that Mrs. Stowe had misrepre 
 sented the facts, wilfully or otherwise; that slavery as she pic 
 tured it did not exist; that the slaves were in fact contented 
 with their lot. At least one novel was written to show another 
 side of the question Aunt Phillis Cabin, or Southern Life as 
 If Is; but even in the South such books had little success. 
 Of two columns of this story printed in the Southern Press, a 
 clergyman of South Carolina wrote, "The editor might have 
 saved himself being writ down as an ass by the public if he 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 297 
 
 had withheld his nonsense. If the two columns are a fair speci 
 men of Mrs. Eastman s book, I pity her attempt and her 
 name as an author." But serious literary defenses of slavery 
 would not have been unreasonable, nor would they have 
 troubled Mrs. Stowe. The personal attacks upon her char 
 acter, however, were of a nature quite unworthy of the chiv 
 alrous South; evidently the Legrees were getting into print. 
 From an Alabama paper came this not exceptionally harsh 
 criticism: "The plan for assaulting the best institutions in the 
 world may be made just as rational as it is by the wicked 
 (perhaps unconsciously so) authoress of this book. The 
 woman who wrote it must be either a very bad or a very fanat 
 ical person. For her own domestic peace we trust no enemy 
 will ever penetrate into her household to pervert the scenes 
 he may find there with as little logic or kindness as she has 
 used in her Uncle Tom s Cabin. 1 
 
 Mrs. Stowe had too much confidence in her cause to be 
 seriously annoyed at such vague and futile assaults, but she 
 felt it due to herself to publish the documents and experi 
 ences upon which she had based her picture of slavery. The 
 Key to Uncle Tom s Cabin, 1853, was not, perhaps, stronger 
 than the novel, as Mrs. Stowe expected it to be; but it pre 
 sented a mass of material which could not be explained 
 away, and which must have had its effect on the popular 
 mind. Its only literary interest is the proof it gives of Mrs. 
 Stowe s skilful or fortunate restraint in selecting incidents 
 for the novel. She is rightly credited with little literary fine 
 ness, and a general indifference to literary structure; but in 
 her one great novel her instinctive choice of what would be 
 immediately and permanently effective, considering all she 
 might have written and the emotional excitement in which she 
 wrote, is entirely remarkable. 9 
 
 Meanwhile she was finding practical opportunity for work 
 against slavery that would have confirmed her in her im- 
 
298 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 pressions of the evil, if she had needed any reassurance. In 
 1852, in the Spring, she visited her brother, Henry Ward 
 Beecher, in Brooklyn, and there interested herself in the Ed- 
 monsons, a slave family that the great preacher had once be 
 fore served well. In 1848, Emily and Mary Edmonson at 
 tempted to escape from slavery, were arrested, and were sold 
 for the New Orleans market. Their father, a free man, came 
 North to raise the amount asked for them, $2,250. Henry 
 Ward Beecher found the old man on his door-step, took him 
 to Plymouth Church, and by the eloquence of his appeal 
 raised the entire sum that evening. 
 
 Now two other members of the Edmonson family were to 
 be sold, and the mother, a slave woman, came North in the 
 desperate hope of imitating her husband s success. At Mr. 
 Beecher s home she found Mrs. Stowe, who was so deeply 
 touched by the age and the devout character of the slave 
 mother that she undertook to raise the price of the children, 
 or pay it herself. She then started a subscription, which 
 Jenny Lind and her husband headed, and as the amount to 
 be raised this time was only twelve hundred dollars, she ac 
 complished her purpose in three or four weeks. 
 
 During this visit of Mrs. Stowe s her husband was called 
 to a professorship in the Theological Seminary at Andover, 
 and she took charge of one more removal and setting up of the 
 home. The life at Andover was to prove altogether to her 
 taste in a New England community of the best traditions, 
 with the adequate comforts her literary success had made 
 possible, and with the society of cultured men and women; it 
 was a marked change from the unlovely Ohio days, Mrs. 
 Stowe, true Puritan, even doubted if it was right for her to 
 enjoy such happiness: "I am almost afraid to accept it," she 
 wrote, "and should not, did I not see the hand that gives it 
 all, and know that it is both firm and true." But it may be 
 questioned now whether the residence at Andover was of ad- 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 299 
 
 vantage to Mrs. Stowe s writing. She had been bred among 
 theologians, and was most at home in the religious atmo 
 sphere. In a novel of a great cause, a plea for humanity, the 
 religious strain went naturally with the sublime subject; but 
 there was danger that in less lofty writing it might become a 
 mannerism. Whether or not Mrs. Stowe became too habit 
 ually the preacher, the religionist, in her later work, is prob 
 ably a matter of taste; her religion was too fervid and sincere 
 to degenerate into mannerism. But it was unfortunate at 
 least that at the moment of her great success, when she was 
 open to more influences than at any time before in her some 
 what provincial life, she should have returned to what seems 
 to have been an almost exclusively theological atmosphere. 
 A little more experience of the world might have saved her 
 later from the well-intended but too credulous defense of 
 Lady Byron. With all respect for the seminary community, 
 one feels a certain sinking of the heart on reading this de 
 scription of the secular amusements of the gifted author of 
 the most popular book in America, "Last evening a num 
 ber of us climbed Prospect Hill, and had a most charming 
 walk. Since I came here we have taken up hymn-singing to 
 quite an extent, and while we were all up on the hill we sang 
 * When I can read my title clear. It went finely." 
 
 In April, 1853, Mrs. Stowe sailed for England with her 
 husband and her brother Charles. She had been invited to 
 make the voyage by the Antislavery Society of Glasgow, and 
 many similar organizations invited her to meet with them; 
 she was treated as the authorized ambassador of the cause, 
 and few Americans have had such a reception in the old 
 country. Her letters give vivid descriptions of the entire trip; 
 their tone is one of absolute happiness and enjoyment, and 
 one wonders if she ever again experienced such light-hearted 
 pleasure. Nothing but her own nature, simple and true, 
 could have taken her unspoiled through s.uch an ordeal of 
 
300 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 flattery and homage. When she landed at Liverpool she was 
 met by a great crowd, that stood silent, apparently because 
 it was Sunday, while she passed through. In the hospitable 
 English home near Liverpool, where she was entertained for 
 a few days, she met the foremost people of the city, and had 
 her taste of real lionizing. Her own account of her entrance 
 into Scotland is full of homely thrills, for to her as to so many 
 travelers, the country of romance and canniness made its 
 peculiarly direct appeal. When she neared the border she 
 and her companions sang almost hysterically the Scotch airs 
 they knew, since they would "never come into Scotland for the 
 first time again." They recognized famous parts of the land 
 scape, and fell to recalling Scott s novels, that had filled the 
 land for them with memories. But at one small station where 
 the train stopped in the dark, Mrs, Stowe had the greeting 
 that perhaps touched her most; a crowd of simple folk were 
 waiting to speak to her, for love of her book, and finding out 
 her carriage, they reached through the window to shake her 
 hand and to say "Ye re welcome to Scotland." "I shall 
 never forget the thrill of those words," she writes, "nor the 
 Gude night. " 
 
 Her Scotch experiences were all much alike; in Glasgow, 
 Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Dundee she was charmingly en 
 tertained by her admirers, and in each place the public seemed 
 determined to make her at home in their city, as Scotchmen 
 know how to do. They were at the train to greet her when she 
 came, and to wish her God-speed when she went; and they had 
 enormous gatherings in her honor. A national penny offer 
 ing, amounting to a thousand pounds, was collected and pre 
 sented to her at Edinburgh, to be used in America for the 
 slaves; the contributors were people of all classes who had 
 read and loved Uncle Tom s Cabin. Mrs. Stowe s picture 
 was on exhibition in all the shops, and she was delighted when 
 one small boy in Edinburgh, trying to distinguish her in the, 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 301 
 
 crowd, suddenly called to a comrade, "Heck, that s her; 
 see the courts!" She remembered also the gigantic Scotch 
 farmer, one of the Duke of Argyll s men, who asked to be 
 presented to her, because he had read her book and would 
 walk six miles to see her any day. But for all the brightness 
 of these days, it was not in her serious nature to miss the 
 moral of it; she left Scotland realizing the enormous influence 
 a work of fiction might exert, and determined to use that 
 power conscientiously in the cause of humanity. 
 
 From Scotland she went to London. Her reception in Eng 
 land was as cordial as in the north country, but it was from 
 the men of letters and the aristocracy, rather than from the 
 public. She met Dickens, Gladstone, Macaulay, Kingsley, 
 and Hallam, to name but a few, and in an unlucky hour she 
 met Lady Byron, who won her heart by a few remarks "on 
 the present religious aspect of England, remarks of such 
 quality as one seldom hears." She visited Kossuth, on the 
 outskirts of London, and came away happy with his parting 
 benediction. At Stafford House the Duchess of Sutherland 
 invited a remarkable group of the most brilliant people in 
 English society to meet Mrs. Stowe, and at the close of the 
 evening presented her with a gold bracelet, shaped like the 
 slave s shackle, with the dates of the abolition of the slave- 
 trade and slavery in England, and the words "We trust it is 
 a memorial of a chain that is soon to be broken." 
 
 These honors, like the Scotch tributes, left Mrs. Stowe as 
 modest about her achievements as she was when a child in 
 Litchfield. She hardly dwells longer on them in her letters 
 than on the humors of her experience, her repeating Gray s 
 Elegy in a churchyard near Windsor for the poet s sake, and 
 finding later that it was the wrong churchyard ; and especially 
 her ordering a dress from a dressmaker, innocently believing 
 that in London the dressmaker was a trusted member of 
 society, as in a Maine village, only to learn from an uproar 
 
302 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 in the public press that she had patronized a manager of 
 sweatshops. After three months of uneventful sight-seeing on 
 the Continent, she returned to America in September. Her 
 record of the trip was published in Sunny Memories, 1854, 
 a collection of letters written during the journey or just after; 
 the title is true to the spirit in which she had made her first 
 acquaintance with foreign lands. 
 
 On her return to America Mrs. Stowe naturally occupied a 
 conspicuous position in the growing crusade against slavery; 
 the public recognition abroad of her services added even to the 
 prestige of her book at home. She found innumerable op 
 portunities awaiting her, and into all she threw herself with 
 characteristic enthusiasm, finding good use for the money in 
 trusted to her for the benefit of the slaves, and writing when 
 ever a word from her could bear fruit. Of this minor writing 
 the most important was an eloquent appeal to the women of 
 America to use their influence on the side of freedom in the 
 coming national crisis. The main argument was based on the 
 degrading effect of slavery upon the white family. Though 
 the appeal was necessarily brief, it indicated the slightly 
 different ground from which she was planning the next attack 
 on slavery. This was her novel Dred, which appeared in the 
 spring of 1856. Though it is now a forgotten book, at least 
 in comparison with its great predecessor, it had almost as 
 great a success at first; Queen Victoria was not alone in pre 
 ferring it to Uncle Tom s Cabin. 
 
 VI 
 
 In the earlier novel Mrs. Stowe had given a general picture 
 of slavery, from the standpoint of the slave. In Dred she 
 undertook to show the pernicious effect of the system upon 
 the white man, upon the aristocratic owner and the poor 
 white squatter alike. In Uncle Tom s Cabin the strongest 
 appeal had been made, perhaps unintentionally, through 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 303 
 
 those characters who were more white than black, yet suffered 
 the full misery of slavery along with the less ambitious and 
 less sensitive negro. It is this cruel mixing of the races, which 
 left the inhuman fathers the right to sell their children or keep 
 them in slavery, that forms the degradation of the aristocratic 
 white family in Dred. Mina Gordon, the heroine, and her 
 brother Tom, had the same father as Harry, their slave over 
 seer; they are ignorant of the relation, but he is not; and when 
 Tom attempts to sell into slavery the widow of his Ohio 
 cousin, Harry knows it is his own sister who is in danger. 
 Tom Gordon exhibits the depraved effects of slavery upon an 
 undisciplined nature, installed by the system in a position of 
 absolute power over his fellow-creatures; he is the darker 
 version of Henrique St. Clare in the earlier novel, the boy of 
 spirit turning tyrant by mere force of opportunity. The 
 tragedy is more horrible in Dred since Tom is lord over his 
 own flesh and blood ; there is nothing, perhaps, in Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin so powerful as the moment when Tom Gordon sees 
 Harry s wife and tells her husband he intends to appropriate 
 her. In the first half of the novel the development of this 
 theme is as terrible as the old Websterian tragedy. 
 
 But Dred is in many ways a disappointing book, and in 
 nothing more than the ease with which its many problems are 
 solved. Harry manages to save his wife, with no greater 
 suffering than the sense of injustice. Mrs. Stowe had told 
 once for all the experiences of a runaway slave; she apparently 
 did not care to repeat the portrait; her interest in Harry and 
 his wife was confined to their relations with his white brother. 
 For the reader, however, the easy solution vitiates the original 
 force of the problem. The same criticism applies to the en 
 tire story. We are first introduced to Miss Gordon at the 
 critical moment in her butterfly career, when she has engaged 
 herself to three lovers at once, and has returned from a fash 
 ionable boarding-school in the North to take charge of her 
 
304 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 Southern estate, of which she understands nothing. No 
 wonder that her brother Harry feels somber misgivings for 
 himself and the rest of the " property." But the reader 
 promptly finds that any worry at this point is unnecessary; 
 Mina suddenly becomes a sensible, tender-hearted woman, 
 dismisses the two lovers she does not wish to marry, and en 
 gages herself publicly to Clayton, a high-minded idealist. Un 
 der his guidance she begins to care for her estate with such 
 wisdom and philanthropy as must surely make her an un 
 welcome member of her community ; but that problem is dis 
 posed of by her sudden death. On his own plantation Clay 
 ton continues his humane program for raising the negro race, 
 till he is in serious danger of his life; that problem is avoided 
 in the story by his leaving the state. So the personage from 
 whom the book chances to take its name, is also, in the ar 
 tistic sense, a disappointment; the problem of Dred s mystical 
 character, and the suggestive possibilities in his power to pro 
 tect and lead even the well educated of his race, are alike dis 
 posed of when he is killed by the slave-hunters. The fact is, 
 Mrs. Stowe had material enough for several plots, all too 
 large and suggestive to be treated in her flowing, discursive 
 manner; the complexity of the material is as much a mis 
 fortune in Dred as the simplicity of theme was the salvation 
 of Uncle Tom s Cabin. Only one thread of the rich tangle is 
 really traced throughout its length ; Tiff gains something from 
 the fact that his career is shown whole and consistent. 
 
 It will not be difficult to see that Dred has no very obvious 
 unity; Mrs. Stowe seems to have had some doubt as to the 
 proper name of the story, and certainly the inspired negro is 
 its hero only incidentally. Perhaps it would be overrash to 
 suggest any person in it as hero or heroine. It is this grave 
 failure in plot that has doubtless caused Dred to be generally 
 forgotten. But the first popularity of the book was due to 
 something more than the glamour of its predecessor; in de- 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 305 
 
 tached situations and in the characters it is more convincing, 
 more subtle, and more human than Uncle Tom s Cabin. The 
 great religious fervor that seemed to purge the first story of all 
 but its crude, sinewy virtues, was on the whole absent in 
 Dred; Mrs. Stowe approached the second book, not simply as 
 a reformer, but as a world-famous author, and both the 
 merits and faults can perhaps be traced to this reestablish- 
 ment of her normal art. The antislavery documents on which 
 the first book had been based, were now better fused in her 
 mind, so that the characters and scenes blend into a more 
 consistent world, yet that world seems further removed from 
 actual experience. Nothing new could be said on the main 
 problem of slavery after Uncle Tom s Cabin; Dred simply 
 repeats the first indictment with more skill in some ways, with 
 less in others. It would not be far out of the way to see in 
 Mina Gordon a new version of Eva the spoiled child with a 
 loving heart, pathetically isolated in her social world by her 
 wish to be of service to her people. The resemblance is 
 strongest in the melodramatic death that takes both characters 
 out of the stories; aside from that, Mina is more human and 
 more interesting than Eva, yet it is obvious that the young 
 woman s perfectly normal wish to be useful in the world, can 
 not compete in immediate effect nor in fame with the pre 
 cocious spirituality of the child. The fine character of St. 
 Clare is suggested in many persons in the second story; the 
 best of his nature is in Clayton, whose capacity for action 
 wins respect that could not be given the paralyzed will of 
 Eva s father. Yet the very difference destroys in Clayton the 
 romantic vein that made St. Clare attractive. There is no 
 one in Dred so degraded as Legree; Tom Gordon is the nearest 
 approach to him, yet the reader feels in a subtle way, as Mrs. 
 Stowe intended, that Gordon is the victim of a system. The 
 original license in his father s nature is in him the cause of 
 drunkenness and reckless evil doing, but he seems less cal- 
 
306 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 culating in his wickedness than Legree, and to that extent 
 less of a fiend. 
 
 In the person of Dred himself Mrs. Stowe develops the 
 African turn for mystery and supernaturalism which she had 
 indicated in Cassey. Like Cassey, too, Dred faintly suggests 
 the ultra-romantic figure in a Scott novel, standing somewhat 
 outside the plot, yet creating the special interest of the story. 
 The first appearances of Dred are remarkably effective, and 
 the scene at the camp-meeting where he utters his prophecy 
 from the darkness is one of the best things in Mrs. Stowe s 
 work. Yet here again the fine opportunity comes to little; 
 with all his foresight and his Hebraic eloquence and his un 
 canny inspiration, Dred meets a very human fate, and we 
 feel cheated in the former rumors of his invulnerability. It is 
 typical of the whole book that his home in the swamp, so 
 minutely described, is not used as a vital element in the situa 
 tion. And in a deep sense Dred s prestige is taken from him 
 at a critical moment when Milly, the religious heroine of the 
 story, successfully answers his call to ajrms with the simple 
 doctrines of Christian charity. 
 
 The case is strong against the artistic construction of Dred. 
 In structure it is amorphous, and few of the characters do 
 anything. Yet those readers who preferred it to Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin could easily have defended their opinion on the ground 
 that the pictures, taken separately, seem truer to the imagina 
 tion, and in one character, Tiff, Mrs. Stowe had idealized 
 the negro even more convincingly than in Uncle Tom him 
 self. In the first novel, where her interest primarily was in the 
 black man, she made out a better case for the mulatto and the 
 quadroon; in Dred, intending to picture more particularly 
 the experiences of the mixed races, the incidental portrait of 
 the black man is best. Evidently there was some paralysis 
 of her genius at the points where she followed a conscious pur 
 pose. Tiff, the loyal servant of the woman who had made 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 307 
 
 an imprudent marriage with a most convincing specimen of 
 " white trash," is brought into the story to show the immense 
 superiority of the black man over the worst of the sovereign 
 race. But the attention soon fixes upon his pride in his mis 
 tress family, and his ambition to bring up the impoverished 
 children in the traditions of their blood. It would be impos 
 sible to find a more beautiful picture of slavery at its best; if 
 this had been the whole story, neither this book nor Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin would have been written; that Mrs. Stowe could 
 do the institution such justice is another proof of her unusual 
 fairness. 
 
 Tiff is entirely lacking in Uncle Tom s heroic qualities 
 and he is not well trained nor experienced in religion ; Milly, 
 the servant of Mina s aunt, takes Uncle Tom s place in the 
 latter respect. But Tiff s deficiencies really make him at 
 tractive, since they leave him with a single mastering passion, 
 loyalty to the family. His uncouth efforts to train the chil 
 dren in polite ways, his advice as to the correct use of the 
 English language, and his unerring instinct for a descendant 
 of a genuine " first family," are not less pathetic for being 
 often ridiculous. And in Mrs. Stowe s favorite field of re 
 ligion Tiff is the occasion of what seems a more effective ap 
 peal than the scenes between Eva and Tom, when he asks 
 Mina to read the Bible to him, and the thoughtless girl real 
 izes that she also is hearing it for the first time. 
 
 The material of Dred, it will have been seen, is simply that 
 of Uncle Tom s Cabin in another form. The neglect of the 
 book to-day can be explained by its obvious deficiencies in 
 form, deficiencies that with the one great exception marred 
 all Mrs. Stowe s work. But the characters are in the main 
 suggestive and true, and there are strong themes and situations 
 everywhere in the story, too many for the author to develop, 
 and too many to mention here. They show sometimes an un 
 expected dramatic instinct, as in the appeal of Clayton s case, 
 
308 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 where his victorious decision for the wronged slave is re 
 versed, as a matter of conscience, by the judge, his own father; 
 and sometimes they show a delightful subtlety of attack, not 
 to be found in Uncle Tom, as where Milly, after years of sad 
 experience, is made to remark quite naively that " white 
 chilen, when they haves themselves, is just as good as black, 
 / and I loves em just as well." 
 
 VII 
 
 In August, 1856, Mrs. Stowe visited England for the second 
 time, accompanied by her husband, her son Henry, her sister 
 Mary and her two eldest daughters. The leisurely journey 
 that she made in England, France, and Italy was of course 
 quieter and more private than her first triumphant progress, 
 but the prestige of Uncle Tom s Cabin was still strong and 
 Dred was in great demand; the letters home show that Mrs. 
 Stowe s welcome among the best minds was not less sincere 
 and warm. If there were no public testimonials to her ser 
 vice as emancipator, there were more private testimonials 
 to her success as an author; letters from Harriet Martineau 
 and others in praise of Dred especially pleased her. Many con 
 sidered the novel her best work, though Prescott protested 
 gently against the "premature smothering" of the heroine. 
 But the record of this trip, like that of the third visit to Europe, 
 in 1859, suggests in many ways that the heroic period in Mrs. 
 Stowe s career was passing. Her nature is still enthusiastic 
 and cheery, her comments on life and thought have still her 
 characteristic zest, but on the one great theme she has had 
 her say, and it is easy to see now that so far as her art is con 
 cerned she is already living in the past. Unsustained by the 
 fire of a just cause, her genius flags somewhat; the note 
 of weariness shows first perhaps in her inadequate por 
 trait of Charles Kingsley, whom she visited, and later in 
 her gossip about spiritualism, toward which she exhibited 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 309 
 
 the same simple credulity as she was to show toward Lady 
 Byron. 
 
 Professor Stowe was obliged to return to America in Sep 
 tember, and a month later his son Henry followed, to enter 
 Dartmouth College. Mrs. Stowe s return in June was sad 
 dened by the tragic death of this boy, drowned in the Con 
 necticut at Hanover. Something of the stern theology her 
 childhood had known now returned to add to Mrs. Stowe s 
 sorrow; loving and good as this son had been, she felt dark 
 questionings as to his spiritual state. The record is in a 
 letter to her sister Catherine, a significant fact, since Cath 
 erine had suffered even greater agony of mind years before, 
 when on the drowning of her lover, Professor Fisher, she 
 could allow herself no faith in his salvation. So when The 
 Minister s Wooing began to appear in December, 1858, in the 
 Atlantic Monthly, it is not surprising that Mrs. Stowe made 
 the new story turn upon the supposed shipwreck of an un 
 converted son. Much in the novel that must have seemed of 
 first importance to the author, was the record of her own ex 
 perience, or the experience of her sister Catherine. But as 
 often happens, the general reader will disagree with the au 
 thor, and find the power of the book in other places. 
 
 So good a critic as Lowell thought T^he_Minister y s Wooing 
 the most characteristic of Mrs. Stowe s works, that on which 
 her fame would rest. He based his opinion on the fact that 
 it dealt with New England Hfe,jvhich the author knew more 
 intimately perhaps than any other writer, and it had so he 
 thought no immediate moral purpose to dry-rot its fame. 
 If his prophecy has not come true, perhaps the explanation 
 lies in Ruskin s complaint that Mrs. Stowe was "too dis 
 dainful of what ordinary readers seek in a novel, under the 
 name of interest that gradually developing wonder, ex 
 pectation, and curiosity." It is true that the novel does not 
 grip the reader as it should, considering the fine elements in 
 
310 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 it; the sad conditions of its composition explain much of its 
 low vitality, which was to characterize almost everything 
 that Mrs. Stowe wrote from that time. But the other fact 
 remains that she here had a special purpose in view, a reli 
 gious moral to teach; it was her great artistic misfortune, as 
 Lowell feared, to be the preacher still. Criticism seems ruth 
 less which condemns the theological comfortings the book was 
 intended to convey to parents of boys who had died before 
 they joined the church; but the fact remains that the most 
 respectful reader is now reconciled to skipping that part of the 
 story. 
 
 Much more cc*nyincing_to the modern mind is the beauti 
 ful story of the Minister s sacrifice. In Dr. Hopkins Mrs. 
 Stowe drew the portrait of one of those large mindj,nd simple 
 Jieajls which New England theology bred, and with which 
 she had had an almost unique acquaintance. Artistically 
 there is no false note in the portrait, though Ruskin somewhat 
 irritably objected to the extreme simplicity that was blind 
 to Mary s love for her lost sweetheart, James Marvyn. But 
 the simplicity jg madeLcredible Jn_the^stoiY by the devotion 
 of Mrs. Scudder and the other faithful sisters of the congrega 
 tion, who so tempered this practical world for the comfort of 
 their idealizing pastor, that he never stopped to question 
 where his new shirts and fresh-curled wigs came from; and 
 Mrs. Scudder with the same loving calculation set aside her 
 daughter as his wife before he or she realized the disposition 
 of their fate, which all three considered the will of a kindly 
 Providence. The ministexl&^a^nficejs all the more affecting, 
 when he learns that he is unconsciously forcing a child s 
 hearty the f ouch of indignation and the sudden gathering of 
 his dignity at the news finely humanize his too unworldly 
 character; the reader, mindful of the abundant preachment of- 
 the book, is inclined to think with the grateful James Marvyn 
 that this one act of the Doctor s is worth many sermons. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 311 
 
 Like Dred, the novel is weak on the formal side. It falls 
 into two parts, separate both in plot and in treatment. The 
 New England life described in the first chapters, is the work 
 of that loving realism which distinguished Mrs. Stowe s early 
 sketches. It was a life she knew well, both in circumstance 
 and in character, through experience or immediate family 
 tradition. Her manner in portraying it is subdued almost to a 
 fault, but in its quiet tone the picture is minute, full of humor, 
 and rich in its illumination of the early New England mind. 
 In this general setting lies the main story of the minister ajici 
 his betrothed, and it is the best part of the book. In the story 
 of Aaron Burr and Virginie de Frontignac, however, Mrs. 
 Stowe essays the historical romance. The two figures, are far 
 too brilliantly colored to subdue themselves to the environ 
 ment or the manner of the main story, and they play no e- 
 sential part in the plot. Their presence, though an artistic 
 fault, could be more easily overlooked if they were not so 
 beautifully drawn and so intrinsically interesting. When 
 they appear they bring a subtle promise that something is to 
 happen, and though they leave the stage simply, with the 
 promise unfulfilled, the imagination is unfortunately attracted 
 to follow them rather than Mary or James or Dr. Hopkins. 
 It is somewhat remarkable, in view of her ancestry and train 
 ing, that Mrs. Stowe should have pictured the French woman 
 with such delicacy and sympathy; her character is true to 
 her nation, and is one more witness to the author s largeness 
 of heart, which had made Uncle Tom s Cabin a popular novel 
 in Paris. 
 
 The problem of the negro is referred to in the novel,Jhough 
 the remoteness of the time makes any large treatment of eman 
 cipation unfitting. Mrs. Stowe cleverly makes the doctrine 
 of freedom one of Dr. Hopkins Utopian theories, so that 
 whatever discussion there is seems in keeping with his brave, 
 unpractical nature; nothing could be more delightful in its 
 
312 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 way than his devout counsel to Simeon Brown, his worldly, 
 slave-dealing friend, to win the favor of God by setting free 
 all his property. Equally effective in other directions is the 
 scene in which Zebedee Marvyn sets free Candace and her 
 husband Cato. Candace is one of Mrs. Stowe s best negro 
 characters, loyal, childlike and humorous; she is also interest 
 ing as a Northern slave, in an economic world far different 
 from the plantation states. Though her position in the home 
 seems more obviously menial than that of Aunt Chloe, for 
 example, Candace is a Southern negro in her capacity for 
 feudal allegiance; she seems out of place, an impossible prod 
 uct of her environment, as we feel in her delightful wrestlings 
 with the Calvinistic Catechism. 
 
 Where Mrs. Stowe is not moved to directness by the ear 
 nestness of her cause, sjiejs nearer eighteenth-century models 
 of novel writing than she is to either Scott or Cooper. It 
 would be fairer to say that she follows the essayists, for a 
 chronological reading of her works induces the opinion that 
 she is more interested in ideas than in stories, and this ex 
 pository interest grows upon her. Without the Addisonian 
 art or lightness of touch, her genius unfolded itself in com 
 ments upon the story, rather than through its development. 
 It was this tendency in the earlier chapters of The Minister s 
 Wooing that Lowell protested against, as a tendency jtp 
 preach; it places the story among those leisurely books that 
 are little likely to be cheaply popular, and which need to be 
 of first excellence to be really good at all. In his own develop 
 ment of the Addisonian manner Irving had raised this style of 
 writing to a perfection Mrs. Stowe could not equal, and on the 
 larger scale of the novel Thackeray seems to have monopo 
 lized the mastery of the sentimental comment and the con 
 fidential aside. But Mrs. Stowe lacked only the art and the 
 trainingjx) excel in her own way; she had naturally the poetical 
 temperament that broods and reflects upon life, and stores it 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 313 
 
 up in wise images. At her best she enriches her story with 
 this philosophical harvest of experience, in a manner not too 
 discursive to help the story on; and if she is at her best but 
 seldom, it is well to remember such fine examples of it as the 
 description of the minister s impractical idealism, a passage 
 that Lowell marked with exceptional praise: 
 
 " There is a ladder in heaven, whose base God has placed in 
 human affections, tender instincts, symbolic feelings, sacra 
 ments of love, through which the soul rises higher and higher, 
 refining as she goes, till she outgrows the human, and changes, 
 as she rises, into the image of the divine. At the very top of 
 this ladder, at the threshold of paradise, blazes dazzling and 
 crystalline that celestial grade where the soul knows itself no 
 more, having learned through a long experience of devotion, 
 how blest it is to lose herself in that eternal Love and Beauty 
 of which all earthly fairness and grandeur are but the dim 
 type, the distant shadow. This highest step, this saintly eleva 
 tion, which but few select best spirits ever on earth attain, to 
 raise the soul to which the Eternal Father organized every 
 relation of human existence and strung every chord of human 
 love, for which this world is one long discipline, for which 
 the soul s human education is constantly varied, for which it 
 is now torn by sorrow, now flooded by joy, to which all its 
 multiplied powers tend with upward hands of dumb and ig 
 norant aspiration, this Ultima Thule of virtue had been 
 seized by our sage as the all of religion. He knocked out 
 every round of the ladder but the highest, and then pointing 
 to its hopeless splendor, said to the world, Go up thither and 
 be saved! " 
 
 Lowell s prophecy that The Minister s Wooing would lead 
 Mrs. Stowe s other work by virtue of its record of New Eng 
 land life, does not seem likely to come true, so far as its fame 
 is concerned, but when all account is taken of the faults and 
 merits of the story, our opinion comes back to his point that 
 Mrs._ Stowe could portray the old Puritan mind with peculiar 
 authority. The persons in this book explain much that 
 
314 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 puzzles one in the popular idea of the early New Englander. 
 There is the sternness, the thrift, the practical sense, even the 
 slyness, of the traditional Yankee, and there is of course such 
 a capacity for deep religious feeling as would be hard to match 
 outside the Puritan character. But just as vitally there is a 
 tradition of culture and art, of the lighter graces of life, and 
 more unexpected under a system of rigid religious dogma, a 
 great spiritual curiosity, a yearning for the unseen beauty and 
 truth that the world may contain. It is this side of the New 
 England character that was to produce Emerson and Haw 
 thorne and Lowell, and Mrs. Stowe herself. It is shown in 
 the story as something not quite understood by the persons 
 themselves; Mary inherits it from her dead father, and is 
 troubled at her own generous impulses, thinking them often 
 motions of sin; and her lover, James Marvyn, inherits it from 
 his mother, and determines to see the world, to the scandal of 
 a family where the other sons, in Stevenson s phrase, were 
 " sedentary folk and known in the land." This large curiosity 
 imprisoned in a narrow fate is specifically ascribed to Mar 
 vyn s mother. Not only are such baffled desires the very 
 tragedy of a limited country horizon, but as Mrs. Stowe de 
 scribes them they seem the romance and the power of New 
 England character : 
 
 "What might be that marvelous music of the Miserere, of 
 which she read, that it convulsed crowds and drew groans 
 and tears from the most obdurate ? What might be those 
 wondrous pictures of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci ? What 
 could it be to see the Apollo, the Venus? What was the 
 charm that enchanted the old marbles, charm untold and 
 inconceivable to one who had never seen even the slightest ap 
 proach to a work of art ? Then those glaciers of Switzerland, 
 that grand, unapproachable mixture of beauty and sublim 
 ity in her mountains ! what would it be to one who could 
 see it? Then what were all those harmonies of which she 
 read, masses, fugues, symphonies ? Oh, could she once hear 
 
> HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ^ 315 
 
 the Miserere of Mozart, just to know what music was like! 
 And the cathedrals, what were they? How wonderful they 
 must be, with their forests of arches, many-colored as autumn- 
 woods with painted glass, and the chants and anthems roll 
 ing down their long aisles! On all these things she pondered 
 quietly, as she sat often on Sundays in the old staring, rattle- 
 windowed meeting-house, and looked at the uncouth old 
 pulpit, and heard the choir faw-sol-laing or sing fuguing 
 hymns; but of all this she said nothing." 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Pearl of Orr s Island, published serially in the New 
 York Independent in 1862, was planned as early as 1852, when 
 the Stowes first went to Andover. It was written in 1858, 
 simultaneously with The Minister s Wooing, when Mrs. Stowe 
 was saddened by the death of her son. It is not surprising 
 that the tone of the story is solemn, nor that the horrors of 
 drowning enter the plot, as they had the plot of The Minis 
 ter s Wooing. If that novel is a realistic study of old New 
 England life, the Pearl o^Orr s Island is a poetical dream of 
 it, one almost suspects, an attempt to preserve it in the 
 Theocritean manner. The gentle Whittier preferred it to 
 Mrs. Stowe s other works; he called it "the most charming 
 New England idyl ever written." It is rich externally, ia. 
 language, in poetical imagery and even, what is rare with 
 its author, in felicities of style and cadence. It leaves the 
 reader with many striking pictures, such as the finding of 
 Moses with his surroundings, the two children floating out 
 to sea on their first perilous voyage. But what enriches the 
 book most is the sense of deep and broad experience of life 
 that belongs to practically all the characters; simple as their 
 fortunes are, they have lived much. In no other book has 
 Mrs. Stowe given so consistent an impression of experience. 
 
 But it is easy to explain the slight fame of the book, in spite 
 of its real excellences. Its sentimentality is excessive; Mara s 
 
316 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 death, for example, is as wilful murder as ever author com 
 mitted on a defenseless girl, though in view of Mrs. Stowe s 
 summary way with her other delicate heroines, the reader 
 might have guessed there was no hope for her from the first. 
 Another phase of the sentimentality, unimportant in itself but 
 carried to an astounding degree, is the propensity of the char 
 acters, especially in the beginning of the book, to sing hymns. 
 The names of the tunes are recorded. When Zephaniah sets 
 sail in his boat for the meeting-house on the mainland, he 
 raises his Sunday-morning psalm. When Mrs. Fennel and 
 Miss Ruey are together the night of the storm, Miss Ruey 
 sings a hymn to her companion, though the tune is difficult 
 and her voice inadequate through age; she remarks with a 
 fitness Mrs. Stowe would never have been intentionally guilty 
 of, "I remember singin that ar to Mary Jane Wilson the 
 night she died." 
 
 As an idyl of New England life the story suffers, in that 
 much of its best quality would be true of life on any other 
 shore. It is not localized as successfully as The Minister s 
 Wooing, or later, Poganuc People. Miss Roxy, Miss Ruey, 
 Mrs. Kittridge, and the Fennels seem to belong to New Eng 
 land society, but Mara and Moses, Mr. Sewell the minister, 
 Sally Kittridge, and above all her delightful story-telling 
 father, are characters so general in their qualities that they 
 might be met in any quiet community, in any age. The two 
 most admirable people are Captain Kittridge and his daugh 
 ter; and Sally s fidelity to Mara when Moses asks for her love, 
 is not typical of New England life in an exclusive or distin 
 guishing way, any more than is her father s love of children 
 and his ability to tell them fairy stories. This sense of the un- 
 authenticity of the book as a document of New England life, 
 together with the languid movement of the plot, perhaps 
 accounts for the general oblivion that has overtaken what is 
 in many ways an unusual book. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 317 
 
 Before the publication of The Pearl of Orr s Island Mrs. 
 Stowe s interests had been completely engrossed by the Civil 
 War. Her son Frederick enlisted in the First Massachusetts 
 Volunteers. She bore the parting from him with the heroism 
 to be expected of her character; everything she wrote of him 
 suggests a kind of Spartan joy in his devotion to the cause 
 her genius had served. When his regiment left Boston for the 
 front she was in Brooklyn, but succeeded in meeting him at 
 the depot in Jersey City. Somewhat over a year later she was 
 in Washington at a Thanksgiving dinner for the fugitive 
 slaves. Her son, now a lieutenant, was stationed near by, 
 and she procured his absence from the regiment for forty- 
 eight hours. The following July he was seriously wounded at 
 Gettysburg. He was then a captain, and his character and 
 ability might have carried him far. But the fragment of shell 
 had injured his brain permanently. It was for his sake that 
 Mrs. Stowe bought a Florida plantation after the war, but his 
 health did not mend. Some years later he sailed for Cali 
 fornia, hoping for the benefit of a long voyage; he reached 
 his destination, but nothing more was ever heard of him. 
 
 The war brought a less personal but still bitter tragedy to 
 Mrs. Stowe in the attitude of the English toward the North. 
 It was naturally incomprehensible to her that the country 
 which had idolized her for the attack on slavery should side 
 with the slave states when the attack became actual. The 
 genuineness of the well-remembered welcome and praise so 
 few years before could not but seem insincere now. She com 
 forted herself in the loyalty of a few powerful friends, such as 
 the Duchess of Sutherland, who kept their faith in the cause 
 of freedom. Her own impetuous Beecher blood is evident in 
 her criticisms of the Northerners in prosecuting the war. She 
 had tried to get her son transferred from the infantry to the 
 cavalry, because the cavalry saw more active service; and in 
 the same spirit she would have had slavery abolished sooner 
 
318 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 than it was, and she blamed Lincoln for being too slow. Her 
 childhood aspiration to make some declaration on her own 
 account was still her guiding impulse, and she required the 
 same immediateness of the nation s leaders. 
 
 One telling opportunity of speaking out for the cause pre 
 sented itself. In the height of the popularity of Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin more than half a million women in Great Britain had 
 signed an address to the women of the United States, and had 
 forwarded it to Mrs. Stowe. This remarkable document, 
 representing every class of society in England, had pleaded for 
 the abolition of slavery. In January, 1863, Mrs. Stowe pub 
 lished in the Atlantic Monthly a singularly adroit reply. After 
 acknowledging the pleas contained in the address, she re 
 counted the tremendous events which through the interven 
 ing eight years had agonized the country in war, and had 
 finally led to the emancipation of the slaves. Then with the 
 greatest dignity and restraint she made the charge against 
 England which of course was the purpose of the reply. She 
 reminded her readers that after all the English pleas for the 
 slave, England had morally supported the South, and the 
 North had made the fight with every discouragement from 
 overseas. The vigorous scorn that had flashed in many a 
 page of Uncle Tom s Cabin, spoke again: 
 
 "Step after step has been taken for liberty; chain after 
 chain has fallen, till the march of our armies is choked and 
 clogged by the glad flocking of emancipated slaves; the day of 
 final emancipation is set; the border states begin to move in 
 voluntary consent; universal freedom for all dawns like the 
 sun in the distant horizon, and still no voice from England. 
 No voice ? Yes, we have heard on the high seas the voice of a 
 war-steamer, built for a man-stealing Confederacy, with Eng 
 lish gold, in an English dockyard, going out of an English 
 harbor, manned by English sailors, with the full knowledge 
 of English government officers, in defiance of the Queen s 
 proclamation of neutrality! So far has English sympathy 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 319 
 
 overflowed. We have heard of other steamers, iron-clad, de 
 signed to furnish to a slavery-defending Confederacy their 
 only lack, a navy for the high seas. We have heard that the 
 British Evangelical Alliance refuses to express sympathy with 
 the liberating party, when requested to do so by the French 
 Evangelical Alliance. We find in English religious newspa 
 pers all those sad degrees in the down-sliding scale of de 
 fending and apologizing for slaveholders and slaveholding, 
 with which we have so many years contended in our own 
 country. We find the President s Proclamation of Emanci 
 pation spoken of in those papers only as an incitement to 
 servile insurrection." 
 
 This reply of Mrs. Stowe s had considerable influence in 
 changing the trend of English public opinion. It is worthy 
 of remembrance as her last direct plea for the slaves, the 
 cause of freedom out of which her fame arose. 
 
 IX 
 
 In this same year, 1863, Professor Stowe resigned his posi 
 tion at Andover, and the family returned to Hartford, where 
 Mrs. Stowe built a home on a spot that had been a favorite 
 with her in girlhood. In the next ten years the growing in 
 dustries of the city crowded the Stowes from the neighbor 
 hood, and they removed in 1873 to wnat remained their per 
 manent Hartford home. At the close of the war Mrs. Stowe 
 also bought a home in Florida, largely, as we have seen, for 
 the sake of her son Frederick, but partly in order to do some 
 thing in a private way for the upbuilding of the South. Here, 
 at Mandarin, on the St. John s River, she spent her winters, 
 working among the colored people and winning the affection 
 of all her neighbors. Her philanthropy was as closely as ever 
 identified with religious work, but by this time she had joined 
 the Episcopal Church, to which her daughters already be 
 longed, and she interested herself in a plan of the Bishop of 
 Florida s for establishing a line of churches along the river. 
 
320 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 This change of her church was a matter for much autobio 
 graphical reference in her later writing. Her poetical nature 
 had been attracted by the beauty of the English ritual as much 
 as anything; theologically, however, the whole Beecher family 
 had moved steadily away from the stern Calvinism of two 
 generations back, and Mrs. Stowe s liking for the English 
 Church was simply a result of that broadening liberality re 
 inforced, perhaps, by the far-off traditions of her mother s 
 family. The matter is of importance only because it loomed 
 large in her own mind and in her later writing; the casual 
 reader will not appreciate it, any more than he will guess that 
 The Minister s Wooing was attacked as unorthodox. 
 
 The novels that Mrs. Stowe wrote, in steady succession, 
 to the end of her life are in general of a mild sort of excellence; 
 they would hardly have made her fame unsupported by her 
 earlier success, but they deserve more praise and remem 
 brance than they usually receive. Agnes of Sorrento, 1863, 
 was begun as a short sketch in Florence, during the winter of 
 1859-1860. Mrs. Stowe s genius was not strongly in the di 
 rection of romances, and this novel is hardly to be considered 
 r-seriously in judging her abilities. Of a much finer quality is 
 Old Town Folks, 1869, and Old Town Fireside Stories, 1871, 
 in which she wrote up the stories and reminiscences of her 
 husband, who had an original humor, and evidently could 
 piece out boyhood memories with mature imagination. The 
 characters and incidents are all founded on actual life; the 
 much admired portrait of Sam Lawson simply preserved in 
 Mrs. Stowe s best art a personage her husband often de 
 scribed. Professor Stowe himself, whose delicate physique 
 and mental activity had made him subject all his life to such 
 psychological experiences as highly imaginative natures some 
 times know, appears in both books as the "visionary boy." 
 
 The autobiographical element increases in these later 
 stories; Mrs. Stowe turned back to memories of an earlier 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 321 
 
 New England, or to mental experiences of her own, and one 
 who is interested in her personality will find in these pages an 
 attraction they might not otherwise possess. Her son and 
 biographer thought that Old Town Folks was the last of her 
 works that would survive the generation for which they were 
 written, and the opinion is probably correct; its value is as an 
 authentic picture of long-departed life in New England, just 
 as the charming Poganuc People, 1878, is a sentimental pic 
 ture, broadly idealized, of the author s own girlhood. But 
 even these last books have a brightness of tone and frequently 
 a charming humor that makes one regret their rapid fall and 
 oblivion. My Wife and /, 1872, and We and Our Neighbors, 
 1875, forming one continuous story of life in New York, have 
 much of this general charm, as well as some most attractive 
 characters like Jim Fellows. The second book is further in 
 teresting for the evident influence of Holmes Elsie Venner, in 
 the doctrine illustrated by Dr. Campbell and the Rev. Mr. 
 St. John, that the saving of souls may often be a physiological 
 problem. But Mrs. Stowe knew little specifically of life out 
 of New England, and the ways of high society were not her 
 proper subject. There is little hope that these two novels 
 will ever be referred to as recognizable portraits even of an old- 
 fashioned New York. 
 
 Among much less important writing the biographer of Mrs. 
 Stowe must notice her unfortunate defense of Lady Byron, 
 which brought cruel criticism upon her at the time, and which 
 can be excused now only because of the loyal friendship which 
 prompted it. Lady Byron s character had appealed forcibly 
 to all the pity and romance in Mrs. Stowe s nature. Now 
 after her death when the Recollections of the Countess Guic- 
 cioli were achieving popularity, Mrs. Stowe felt it but plain 
 justice to her friend to publish Lady Byron s privately com 
 municated version of her trouble with the poet. This version, 
 appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1869, under the 
 
322 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 title The True Story 0} Lady Byron s Li}e, astonished the read 
 ing world on both sides of the ocean. In the discussion that 
 followed Mrs. Stowe thought it necessary to put the facts, as 
 she believed them, before the English public in a small 
 volume, The History of the Byron Controversy. Lady Byron s 
 charges against her husband were so gross, and Mrs. Stowe 
 was so entirely without evidence to prove them, that her im 
 pulsive championship left her in a position of embarrassment; 
 her admirers must always feel with George Eliot, who wrote 
 to Mrs. Stowe her wish that the subject had never been 
 stirred up. 
 
 In 1872 Mrs. Stowe accepted an engagement to give read 
 ings from her works throughout the New England states. 
 The following year she repeated this successful venture in 
 the West, but both absences from her husband had been 
 rendered anxious by his gradually failing health. From that 
 time her life was quiet, with such writing to occupy her as she 
 chose to do. The last honor she received was a reception 
 which Hough ton, Mifflin & Co., her publishers, gave her in 
 Newtonville. A poem from Whittier was read, and Dr. 
 Holmes spoke, and read a poem of his own; speeches and 
 letters brought the guest the assurance of the love and admi 
 ration that rewarded her useful life. Her brief reply was de 
 voted with characteristic zeal to portraying the improvement 
 of the negro s condition in the South, and to hopeful praise of 
 his character. 
 
 She died on July i, 1896, and was buried at Andover by the 
 side of her husband, who had died ten years before. 
 
 X 
 
 It is Mrs. Stowe s fate to be remembered among American 
 novelists for a singlg_great_bopk. It seems hardly just that 
 her records of earlier New England^ made with such loving 
 realism as she was capable of, should be dwarfed into neglect 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 323 
 
 by her one colossal success. There will still be thoughtful 
 readers to cherish them for their tratiLand humer. But it 
 must be confessed that even these few will cherish Mrs. 
 Stowe s general novels only in a qualified sort of devotion, 
 after all; for those whose wide reading gives them the finer 
 taste to appreciate the pure gold in The Minister s Wooing or 
 Old Town Folks or Poganuc People, are the very spirits to 
 whom Mrs. Stowe s shortcomings as an artist will seem most 
 grievous. In spite of themselves, they will not keep quite out 
 of mind Lowell s wicked description of the " water gruel of 
 fiction, thinned with sentiment and thickened with morality." 
 It is best to agree with the public judgment, which lets Mrs. 
 Stowe s fame rest safely on the inspired book in which the 
 best of her mind and heart won the world. Her history is 
 complete, with little poetical exaggeration, in the verse of one 
 of those she served, 
 
 " At a stroke she gave 
 A race to freedom and herself to fame." 
 
BRET HARTE 
 
 THE American frontier, which Cooper immortalized in 
 the beginning of its western course, had its last and perhaps 
 most unique record in the writings of Bret Harte. His fame 
 is identical with the nation s memory of early California. 
 Whether the picture he drew was accurate, or colored by a 
 sentimental temperament, must remain a conjecture; for he 
 has taught his admirers to see the rough mining life through 
 his eyes, and his critics, when they would controvert him, are 
 embarrassed by the lack of other accounts than his. So 
 quickly did the fabulous progress of the coast overlay with 
 convention comparatively speaking the rude society he 
 knew, that in The Luck of Roaring Camp he already viewed 
 the miners through an idealizing haze of romance; and a 
 brief period later, when Eastern repute had adopted him, the 
 life he wrote about had become a thing of memory, and no 
 later first-hand portrait of it could fairly be compared with 
 his. 
 
 One reason why Bret Harte s fame rests in California is 
 that he was strangely incapable of drawing any other life. He 
 was in no sense a literary artist, though his friends have made 
 the claim for him...; It might be doubted whether he had even 
 ordinary talents for writing. Certainly the glimpse we have 
 of him in his editorial days, writing and rewriting a simple 
 note to ask a man to dine with him, suggests not scrupulous 
 artistry, but some meagerness of training or inspiration. Only 
 when he wrote of California was he possessed of the magic of 
 
 325 
 
326 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 genius. His temper was one with the recklessness and ro 
 mance of the new country; he had the advantage also of ap 
 proaching it from the East, so that it took hold of him with the 
 surprise and fascination that his stirring portraits of it had for 
 Eastern readers. In default of better evidence, one can well 
 believe his California stories to be accurate, since only these, 
 of all he wrote, are convincing, and their power is in the sub 
 ject, not in the writer s skill. 
 
 But if he is the last term in that frontier progression which 
 began with Cooper, Bret Harte is also a culminating figure in 
 one development of American humor a development with 
 which, it is needless to say, Cooper had nothing to do. The 
 South during the second quarter of the century supplied the 
 material for much humor of the newspaper kind, and out of 
 the mass of ephemeral sketches dealing with border or pro 
 vincial life came half a dozen books, still worth reading, which 
 prepared the way for the tales of the mining camps. About 
 1840 appeared Augustus Baldwin Longstreet s Georgia Scenes, 
 which seems to have had the good fortune of influencing a 
 scene in Mr. Thomas Hardy s The Trumpet Major. In 1840 
 appeared a similar book of broad humor, Major Jones s 
 Courtship, by another Georgian, William Tappan Thompson. 
 In 1846 and 1853, respectively, appeared Johnson Jones 
 Hooper s Adventures oj Captain Simon Suggs, and Joseph 
 Glover Baldwin s Flush Times oj Alabama and Mississippi. 
 These two books portrayed the unsettled life of those days in 
 Alabama and Mississippi, and one thinks of them as finding 
 their way up the great river for the inspiration of Mark 
 Twain, whose early humor was in much the same strain as 
 theirs. From Massachusetts also Captain George Horatio 
 Derby "John Phoenix" had been exploring the West and 
 making known to the East the humor of the Californian coast 
 in the sketches later collected as Phcenixiana, 1855. Bret 
 Harte is not a lonely figure in our literature, save as his genius 
 
BRET HARTE 327 
 
 obscures these lesser men; nor is Dickens the only source of 
 his literary tradition. 
 
 II 
 
 Bret Harte was born on August 25, 1839, in Albany, New 
 York. He was named Francis Bret, but shortened the name 
 when he began to write. His father was a teacher of Greek at 
 the Albany College, a small seminary; his mother, whose 
 name was Truesdale, apparently contributed to his character 
 the restless, unliterary part of it, if we may judge from the 
 story that she accompanied him to California. His ancestry 
 was of English, German, and Hebrew sources; his father was 
 a Roman Catholic, his mother a Protestant. If his heredity 
 and early environment served him at all, they must have pre 
 pared him for the heterogeneous elements of California life. 
 
 He was a delicate child, and his mother seems to have 
 sheltered him from the father s admirable purpose to give 
 him an education. He was allowed to run pretty wild, most 
 of the time out-of-doors, where he learned to know the little 
 city, and according to his own later account, became ac 
 quainted with its honorable history, and idealized its traffic, 
 the number of ships in its river and canals, and the quantity 
 of timber, wheat, barley, wool, and tobacco in their cargoes. 
 In his leisure he also found out books; he read Dombey 6r* Son 
 as it first appeared, in his seventh year, and from that mo 
 ment Dickens was his master. Smollett, Fielding, Gold 
 smith, Cervantes, and the other great story-tellers that would 
 be found in his father s library, he read and re-read, and when 
 he was eleven he wrote a poem, Autumn Musings, cynical and 
 worn in tone, and sent it to the New York Sunday Atlas, which 
 published it. His family showed unusual sense in resisting 
 the usual parental impulse to praise; in fact, they pointed out 
 that the poem was very poor indeed, and Bret Harte remem 
 bered his discouragement so keenly that he afterward won- 
 
328 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 dered that he ever wrote verse again. It would have been a 
 blessing quite unmixed if he could have enjoyed such ef 
 fective discouragement at the other end of his life. 
 
 The years of his boyhood in Albany he idealized, in talk 
 long afterwards with his friends; and he told of his dis 
 appointment on revisiting childhood scenes. But it may be 
 doubted if the idealization were not the product of a Dickens- 
 like sentimentality, acquired with literary consciousness, 
 rather than the true result of memory; one may well feel that 
 Bret Harte never wholly lived any part of his life except those 
 years in California on which his genius throve; of his boyhood 
 nothing survives in his writing, and he never made his own 
 the experiences that lay open to him in the East or in Europe. 
 
 The circumstances that led Bret Harte to California are not 
 quite clear. He was seventeen years old when he sought his 
 fortune there, in 1856, and the simplest reason for his going is 
 that he was lured by the promise of gold in the new country. 
 But it appears that his mother accompanied him his father 
 was already dead and what record we have of his occupa 
 tions in the Pacific state suggests that he had no very definite 
 purpose at all. We wonder why a delicate youth should have 
 undertaken the long journey and the uncertain, adventurous 
 life, and we wonder why his mother should have undertaken 
 it also. Whatever was the motive, Bret Harte immediately 
 found himself in a region of frontier confusion, every separate 
 whirlpool of which aroused some vital response in his nature. 
 His very lack of purpose completed his education by with 
 holding him from almost no acquaintance with this rough but 
 fascinating chaos, and the panorama of those days was 
 stamped in his heart as was the London of his boyhood on the 
 heart of Charles Dickens; The Spaniard, the Greaser, the 
 Chinaman; the gambling house, the warehouse where the 
 trunks of forgotten " forty-niners" were stored, and were 
 finally sold at auction; the scenes of sudden death, mingled 
 
BRET HARTE 329 
 
 with glimpses of humor and chivalry in the actors of the 
 tragedy all that went to make up the stock material of his 
 stories, Bret Harte learned for himself at first hand.] He tried 
 mining, and then became a messenger of the Adams Express 
 Company; he seems to have prospered financially as little in 
 one position as the other, but the stage-coach days gave him 
 a knowledge of the road and its dangers which he later drew 
 upon in the tales. From the perils of the stage-coach he went 
 to the supposedly quiet position of drug clerk. But a mis 
 take in a prescription, according to his own account, proved 
 nearly fatal to the patient, and Bret Harte, having somehow 
 learned to set type, became a printer on a local newspaper. 
 A brief taste of this career satisfied him, and he became a 
 school teacher. But as the bulk of the expense of the school, 
 he tells us, "was borne by a few families in its vicinity, when 
 two of them, representing perhaps a dozen children or 
 pupils one morning announced their intention of moving to 
 a more prosperous and newer district, the school was incon 
 tinently closed." 
 
 Bret Harte had some experience also as an Indian fighter, 
 and beyond that his western adventures had no more to offer 
 in the way of material for future writing. The best record 
 of these adventures is in the use he made of them, in the 
 stories of his first fortunate period; and a general picture of 
 the scene and its manners is in the lecture now prefixed to the 
 Tales oj the Argonauts. What this varied life gave to Bret 
 Harte needs no further elucidation, but it is evident that he 
 brought to the opportunity a certain adaptable genius, the 
 power to enjoy its myriad shapes, which he says was the secret 
 of life in Argonaut days. 
 
 Out of the haphazard career which he first knew in Cali 
 fornia, Bret Harte stepped, by a stroke of good fortune, into 
 a somewhat permanent position, from which he could culti 
 vate his genius with considerable freedom of mind. He had 
 
330 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 * f. 
 
 indeed begun his writing while in the composing-room of 
 The Golden Era, whose editor, Joe Lawrence, had probably 
 encouraged him to contribute at the usual rate of a dollar a 
 column. In this paper Mliss appeared, and the young au 
 thor began to sign his name to his articles with some con 
 sciousness of a literary personality. But he was not estab 
 lished in the community until he occupied a minor position 
 in the General Surveyor s office in San Francisco, a post 
 which he held when he met his future wife, Miss Anna Gris- 
 wold. With characteristic optimism he undertook the re 
 sponsibility of maintaining a home on what must have been 
 meager resources; he was married August n, 1862, by the 
 Methodist minister at San Rafael. 
 
 This optimistic step was justified, shortly after, by Bret 
 Harte s appointment as secretary to the Superintendent of the 
 Mint. In his account of Bohemian Days in San Francisco 
 he tells us that on his arrival he first lived with "a distant re 
 lation a second or third cousin," who kept "a rather ex 
 pensive half-club, half-restaurant in the lower part of the 
 building." Nearby stood the United States Branch Mint, 
 "and its tall factory-like chimneys," he says, "overshadowed 
 my cousin s roof. Some scandal had arisen from an illegal 
 leakage of gold in the manipulation of that metal during the 
 various processes of smelting and refining. One of the ex 
 cuses offered was the volatilization of the precious metal and 
 its escape through the draft of the tall chimneys. All San 
 Francisco laughed at this explanation until it learned that a 
 corroboration of the theory had been established by an assay 
 of the dust and grime on the roofs in the vicinity of the Mint. 
 These had yielded distinct traces of gold. San Francisco 
 stopped laughing, and that portion of it which had roofs in 
 the neighborhood at once began prospecting. Claims were 
 staked out on these airy placers, and my cousin s roof, being 
 the very next one to the chimney, and presumably in the 
 
BRET HARTE 331 
 
 lead, was disposed of to a speculative company for a con 
 siderable sum. I remember my cousin telling me the story 
 for the occurrence was quite recent and taking me with him 
 to the roof to explain it, but I am afraid I was more attracted 
 by the mystery of the closely guarded building, and the 
 strangely tinted smoke which arose from this temple where 
 money was actually being made, than by anything else. Nor 
 did I dream as I stood there a very lanky, open-mouthed 
 youth that only three or four years later I should be the 
 secretary of its superintendent. In my more adventurous am 
 bition I am afraid I would have accepted the suggestion half 
 heartedly. Merely to have helped to stamp the gold which 
 other people had found was by no means a part of my youth 
 ful dreams." 
 
 The Superintendent of the Mint must have been somewhat 
 lenient with his secretary, or Bret Harte must have shown a 
 conscientious interest in official duties which deserted him 
 later in life, for his connection with the Mint seems to have 
 been altogether happy. His work left him leisure to write 
 and to make friends; to his office at the Mint a literary ac 
 quaintance, George Barnes, brought Samuel Clemens, one 
 memorable day, when the great humorist told to his small 
 but delighted audience the story of The Jumping Frog of 
 Calaveras. It was from his office in the Mint that Bret Harte 
 began to publish his burlesques, the Condensed Novels, in 
 The Golden Era, and continued them in The Calijornian. 
 And while occupying this position he met Mrs. Fremont, 
 wife of the Pathfinder, and through her, Thomas Starr King, 
 the preacher, after whom his second son was named, and for 
 whom he felt perhaps the greatest admiration he paid to any 
 man in the West. Among his other friends were Charles 
 Henry Webb, who owned and edited The Calijornian, 
 founded in 1864, and Charles Warren Stoddard, the author 
 of South Sea Idyls. 
 
332 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 In 1865 appeared Bret Harte s first original volume, a book 
 of poems entitled The Lost Galleon. It must have been be 
 fore this date that he edited the collection of western verse 
 which has its immortality in his own account of it, My First 
 Book. Humorous in intention as his record obviously is, it 
 gives a vivid cartoon of literary endeavor and literary criticism 
 at that time and place. A bookseller engaged the young un 
 suspecting writer to compile a single volume of representative 
 Californian verse, such as had appeared in the periodicals and 
 newspapers of the coast. The bookseller was unwise enough 
 to announce his purpose to the general public, and the editor 
 was deluged with unsolicited material, even manuscript con 
 tributions, until the volume, though carefully winnowed; was 
 three times its desired size. "There was clearly nothing to 
 do," Bret Harte goes on, "but to make a more rigid selec 
 tion a difficult performance when the material was uni 
 formly on a certain dead level, which it is not necessary to 
 define here. Among the rejections were, of course, the usual 
 plagiarisms from well-known authors imposed upon an inex 
 perienced country press; several admirable pieces detected 
 as acrostics of patent medicines, and certain veiled libels and 
 indecencies such as mark the first publications on blank 
 walls and fences of the average youth." When the reduction 
 was finally made, and the book published, it sold with a 
 strange rapidity, apparently to all those gentlemen who 
 thought their verses should be found in it. A storm of criti 
 cism arose from the papers whose pet writer had been 
 omitted, and Bret Harte gives several examples of what he 
 calls the "direct style of the Californian sixties, " of which 
 the following is usually considered the most characteristic : 
 
 "The hogwash and purp stuff ladled out from the slop- 
 bucket of Messrs. - - & Co., of Frisco, by some lop- 
 eared Eastern apprentice, and called A compilation of Cali 
 fornian Verse, might be passed over, so far as criticism goes. 
 
BRET HARTE 333 
 
 A club in the hands of any able-bodied citizen of Red Dog, and 
 a steamboat ticket to the Bay, cheerfully contributed from 
 this office, would be all-sufficient. But when an imported 
 greenhorn dares to call his flapdoodle mixture Calif ornian, 
 it is an insult to the state that has produced the gifted * Yellow 
 Hammer, whose lofty flights have from time to time dazzled 
 our readers in the columns of the Jay Hawk. That this 
 complacent editorial jackass, browsing among the dock and 
 thistles which he had served up in this volume, should make 
 no allusion to California s greatest bard, is rather a confession 
 of his idiocy than a slur upon the genius of our esteemed con 
 tributor." 
 
 The amusing account Bret Harte gives of the care with 
 which he edited this volume, would probably stand as a de 
 scription of all his literary work at this time. He was a con 
 scientious craftsman, as all his friends of those days bear 
 witness. One gets the impression that this carefulness was <* 
 due to thinness of inspiration, more than to fastidious taste, 
 yet the evidence shows that he was hard to satisfy in his own 
 work. However rough had been his western experiences, as 
 a writer he was a child of luxury from the first; he could not 
 get on, says one comrade, unless the writing materials, the 
 light and heat, and even the adjustment of the furniture of the 
 writing room were as he desired. In personal appearance 
 also he showed nothing of the frontiersman. Joaquin Miller 
 gives the portrait of him in those days : " I found a spare, slim 
 young man, in a chip hat and a summer dress of the neatest 
 and nattiest cut, who took me cordially into his confidence at 
 once. I liked his low voice, his quiet, earnest, and unaffected 
 manner from the first. He had neat editorial rooms, where he 
 made me welcome, although he was then engaged as Secre 
 tary in the Mint. ... I think he was the cleanest man I ever 
 met. He was always as clean, modest, and graceful of speech 
 as a girl." 
 
334 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 III 
 
 His life in a unique frontier had not stunted Bret Harte s 
 interest in the older world ; his early prose bore witness to the 
 influence of Charles Dickens, and his first volume contained 
 sincere patriotic lyrics inspired by the war. But neither liter 
 ary tradition nor public affairs on a large scale counted per 
 manently with him. He had one message and no other to 
 \ leave us, and the fortuitous discovery of that message, as de- 
 < sirable and unexpected as an argonaut mine, now brought 
 \ him into sudden fame. 
 
 In 1868 Anton Roman, a San Franciscan bookseller and 
 publisher, founded a new magazine, The Overland Monthly, 
 and upon the advice of Stoddard, Noah Brooks and others, 
 invited Bret Harte to edit it. The venture seemed at first 
 somewhat precarious, but the young editor was finally in 
 stalled, and contributed to the first number, in July, a lauda 
 tory poem to San Francisco. As the magazine advertised 
 itself as " devoted to the development of the country," the 
 energetic lines may be suspected of the official laureate note. 
 It had indeed been Bret Harte s intention to write a short story 
 for the magazine s first appearance, but he could not com 
 plete it in time, and it was not till the August number that he 
 printed his famous Luck oj Roaring Camp, the history of 
 which he makes almost as entertaining as an imagined tale. 
 
 That this story was written with the deliberate intention to 
 exploit a local and peculiar type of life, is the author s un 
 mistakable claim. It is not necessarily uncharitable to sup 
 pose that since the claim was made long after the author had 
 won world-wide recognition, perhaps he read back into his 
 half-forgotten intentions something of his fortunate achieve 
 ment. But what is more interesting and quite beyond ques 
 tion, is the fact that this first great picture of Bret Harte s 
 country was rejected by that country, and accepted as true, 
 
BRET HARTE 335 
 
 with much reluctance, only after the East had greeted the 
 writer as a master. To be rejected by the people he describes 
 is, however, the common fate of the novelist of a section. 
 
 The trouble with the story began, Bret Harte says, before 
 it was printed. 
 
 "He had not yet received the proof sheets when he was 
 suddenly summoned to the office of the publisher, whom he 
 found standing the picture of dismay and anxiety with the 
 proof before him. The indignation and stupefaction of the 
 author can well be understood when he was told that the 
 printer, instead of returning the proofs to him, submitted them 
 to the publisher, with the emphatic declaration that the matter 
 thereof was so indecent, irreligious, and improper that his 
 proof-reader a young lady had with difficulty been induced 
 to continue its perusal, and that he, as a friend of the pub 
 lisher and a well-wisher of the magazine, was impelled to pre 
 sent to him personally this shameless evidence of the manner 
 in which the editor was imperilling the future of that enter 
 prise. It should be premised that the critic was a man of 
 character and standing, the head of a large printing estab 
 lishment, a church member, and, the author thinks, a deacon. 
 In which circumstances the publisher frankly admitted to the 
 author that, while he could not agree with all cf the printer s 
 criticisms, he thought the story open to grave objections, and 
 its publication of doubtful expediency." 
 
 The offended author read over his story in its new printed 
 dress, and was so convinced of its quality that he declined to 
 change it. But no one could be found who thought as well 
 of it as he did, and it was finally suggested that as his editorial 
 insight must have been prejudiced in his own interest as an 
 author, it would be becoming for him to withdraw the story. 
 
 This last suggestion had the effect of ending all further dis 
 cussion, for he at once informed the publisher that the ques 
 tion of the propriety of the story was no longer at issue; the 
 only question was of his capacity to exercise the proper edito- 
 
336 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 rial judgment; and that unless he was permitted to test that 
 capacity by the publication of the story, and abide squarely by 
 the result, he must resign his editorial position. The pub 
 lisher, possibly struck with the author s confidence, possibly 
 from kindliness of disposition to a younger man, yielded, and 
 The Luck oj Roaring Camp was published in the current 
 number of the magazine for which it was written, as it was 
 written, without emendation, omission, alteration, or apol 
 ogy. A not inconsiderable part of the grotesqueness of the 
 situation was the feeling, which the author retained through 
 out the whole affair, of the perfect sincerity, good faith, and 
 seriousness of his friend s the printer s objection, and for 
 many days thereafter he was haunted by a consideration of 
 the suffering of this conscientious man, obliged to assist ma 
 terially in disseminating the dangerous and subversive doc 
 trines contained in this baleful fiction. What solemn protests 
 must have been laid with the ink on the rollers and impressed 
 upon those wicked sheets! What pious warnings must have 
 been secretly folded and stitched in that number of The Over- 
 land Monthly! Across the chasm of years and distance the 
 author stretches forth the hand of sympathy and forgiveness, 
 not forgetting the gentle proof-reader, that chaste and un 
 known nymph, whose mantling cheeks and downcast eyes 
 gave the first indications of warning. 
 
 "But the troubles of the Luck were far from ended. It had 
 secured an entrance into the world, but, like its own hero, it 
 was born with an evil reputation, and to a community that had 
 yet to learn to love it. The secular press, with one or two ex 
 ceptions, received it coolly, and referred to its singularity; 
 the religious press frantically excommunicated it, and anathe 
 matized it as the offspring of evil; the high promise of The 
 Overland Monthly was said to have been ruined by its birth ; 
 Christians were cautioned against pollution by its contact; 
 practical business men were gravely urged to condemn and 
 frown upon this picture of Californian society that was not 
 conducive to Eastern immigration ; its hapless author was held 
 up to obloquy as a man who had abused a sacred trust. . . . 
 But, fortunately, the young Overland Monthly had in its 
 first number secured a hearing and position throughout the 
 American Union, and the author waited the larger verdict. 
 
BRET HARTE 337 
 
 The publisher, albeit his worst fears were confirmed, was not 
 a man to weakly regret a position he had once taken, and 
 waited also. The return mail from the East brought a letter 
 addressed to the Editor of The Overland Monthly enclosing 
 a letter from Fields, Osgood & Co., the publishers of The 
 Atlantic Monthly, addressed to the to them unknown Au 
 thor of The Luck oj Roaring Camp. This the author opened, 
 and found to be a request, upon the most flattering terms, for 
 a story for the Atlantic similar to the Luck. The same mail 
 brought newspapers and reviews welcoming the little found 
 ling of Californian literature with an enthusiasm that half 
 frightened its author; but with the placing of that letter in the 
 hands of the publisher, who chanced to be standing by his 
 side, and who during those dark days had, without the au 
 thor s faith, sustained the author s position, he felt that his 
 compensation was full and complete." 
 
 The Californian audience that at first rejected The Luck 
 oj Roaring Camp was of course not the same community that 
 figured in its pages. There seems to have been a wide differ 
 ence in this as in other respects between the typical mining 
 camp and the enterprising city community, which aspired to 
 the sound prosperity and the conventional good name of the 
 East. To this all but Puritan audience Bret Harte had ad 
 dressed Mliss and his other early work, and it was not en 
 tirely strange that they should have been reluctant to see the 
 new story go out as descriptive of them. Their taste in litera 
 ture was made more cautious by frontier jealousy for their 
 rising city; they read Eastern magazines of the better class, 
 and even foreign papers of acknowledged quality were not 
 uncommon. Bret Harte later found more difficulty, he says, 
 in procuring a copy of Punch in an English Provincial town, 
 than in the prosperous mining centers of the West. That 
 there was in California this conventional, conservative society 
 must be remembered when the truth of Bret Harte s pictures 
 is weighed; this normal part of the community, which his best 
 
338 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 work neglects, never cared to acknowledge that he had ac 
 curately portrayed California, and their objection seems per 
 fectly reasonable, in the sense that he portrayed only the 
 section of the life that interested him. In another sense, how 
 ever, his genius did create a complete record of the Coast, for 
 in such annotations as the preface from which we quoted, he 
 left perhaps the most vivid glimpses we have of the trans 
 planted Puritan; the scrupulous printer has no other im 
 mortality than by way of foot-note to the masterpiece he 
 would have suppressed. 
 
 The success of the story led the author to contribute to his 
 magazine The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Tennessee s Partner, and 
 other tales, which within a year reappeared in a volume en 
 titled The Luck of Roaring Camp and other Sketches. Mean 
 while as editor he displayed both energy and ability in en 
 couraging his writers and building up the Monthly, Stoddard 
 and Joaquin Miller testified to the inspiring help they had 
 from one who might easily have been preoccupied with his 
 own success. Along with this literary work Bret Harte was 
 trying to continue his duties in the Mint with what profit to 
 the Government it is impossible now to tell. The appearance 
 in the magazine of The Heathen Chinee, in 1870, brought his 
 fame to such a sudden height that the Eastern world of letters 
 persuaded him to return to it. He was never proud of the 
 extravagant verses that took the English-speaking world by 
 storm; Ah Sin, Truthful James and Bill Nye were the easiest 
 names with which to bore him at a dinner party; his interest 
 in the poem lay in his own humorous audacity in modeling 
 its versification upon the antiphonal dirge at the end of Swin 
 burne s Atalanta in Calydon. Yet this poem brought to him 
 an invitation that was almost a command to return to his own 
 part of the country, and accordingly, early in 1871, he left 
 California for New York. 
 
 His progress across the continent was the great triumph of 
 
BRET HARTE 339 
 
 his life. Looking back now, we find it difficult to understand 
 such a furor of welcome as awaited him in city after city. He 
 was hailed as a new prophet in American letters with far more 
 acclaim than any of the older prophets had enjoyed partly 
 because of the strangeness of the world he portrayed, and 
 partly, perhaps, because of a fascination in himself which 
 could have no other record than the enthusiastic memory 
 of his friends. At first he lived up to the high expectations, 
 especially on the personal side; he made an unusually in 
 teresting lion, so striking in appearance was he, with so much 
 vague romance for a halo. What sort of fascination he ex 
 erted upon the Eastern mind may be illustrated from Fanny 
 Kemble s impression of him at a slightly later date: 
 
 "He reminded me of our old pirate and bandit friend, 
 Trelawney, in his appearance, though the latter was an al 
 most orientally dark-complexioned man, and Mr. Bret Harte 
 was comparatively fair. They were both tall, well-made men 
 of fine figure; both, too, were handsome, with a peculiar ex 
 pression of face, which suggested small success to any one 
 who might engage in personal conflict with them. 
 
 "He told us of one of his striking experiences, and his tell 
 ing of it made it singularly impressive. He had arrived at 
 night at a solitary house of call on his way, absolutely isolated 
 and far distant from any other dwelling a sort of rough, 
 roadside tavern, known and resorted to by the wanderers of 
 that region. Here he was to pass the night. The master of 
 the house, to whom he was known, answered his question as 
 to whether any one else was there by giving the name of a 
 notorious desperado, who had committed some recent out 
 rage, and in search of whom the wild justices the lynchers 
 of the wilderness were scouring the district. This guest, the 
 landlord said, was hiding in the house, and was to leave it (if 
 he was still alive) the next day. Bret Harte, accustomed to 
 rough company, went quietly to bed and to sleep, but was 
 aroused in the middle of the night by the arrival of a party of 
 horsemen, who called up the master of the house and inquired 
 if the man they were in pursuit of was with him. Upon re- 
 
340 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 ceiving his repeated positive assurance that he was not, they 
 remounted their horses and resumed their search. 
 
 "At break of day Bret Harte took his departure, finding 
 that for the first part of his journey he was to have the hiding 
 hero of the night (thief or murderer, probably) for his com 
 panion, to whom, on his departure, the master of the house 
 gave the most reiterated, precise, and minute directions as to 
 the only road by which it would be possible that he could 
 escape his pursuers, Bret Harte meanwhile listening to these 
 directions as if they were addressed to himself. They rode 
 silently for a short time and then the fugitive began to talk 
 not about his escape, nor about the danger of the past night, 
 nor about the crime he had committed, but about Dickens 1 
 last story, in which he expressed such an eager and enthusi 
 astic interest, that he would have passed the turning of the 
 road by which he was to have made his escape if Bret Harte 
 had not pointed it out to him, saying, That is your way. " 
 
 The national attention to Bret Harte was noticed abroad, 
 and was practically his introduction to foreign readers. One 
 English paper devoted much space to his triumphal progress 
 across the Continent, half in derision of America s enthusiasm, 
 and half in appreciation of his true genius. It was once asked, 
 the paper said, Who reads an American book ? 
 
 "The question is now repeated only as a note of triumph. 
 But since Sydney Smith s phrase has become its own refuta 
 tion, there have not been those wanting who, in the spirit of 
 it, have asserted that America has not known its great writers 
 until they had been recognized by the Old World, and the 
 earliest fame of Irving, Emerson, and Hawthorne, has been 
 claimed as European. Whatever may be said on this very 
 doubtful theory, certain it is that in the present instance 
 America has got far ahead of us, for we fear that not a few 
 of the most intelligent English readers will be found asking, 
 Who is Mr. Bret Harte ? and what has he said or done ? 
 
 "We answer, he is a young author who has succeeded in 
 making all America burst into inextinguishable laughter. He 
 has done this not by ingenuity of misspelling, nor by gro- 
 tesqueness of literary grimace, but by a series of really hu- 
 
BRET HARTE 341 
 
 morous works, capped by a local satire that has raised the 
 cachinnations into a hearty roar that can only be described as 
 national. Though Mr. Harte s universal popularity is in his 
 own country recent, and has not found us on this side of the 
 water sufficiently released from the heaviness of the tragedy 
 at our doors to swell it, yet there are some in this country, as 
 in America, whose divining rods search out genius as far as 
 California, and distinguish it from the base ores, as the 
 miners, with whom Mr. Harte is so familiar, their nuggets of 
 gold. There have been readers here also of the excellent 
 Overland Monthly, whose appearance in California was one 
 sign of the disappearance of chaos and of the beginning of a 
 higher social stratification. They have marked in that peri 
 odical the lexquisite sketches of life, portraits of character, 
 curious stories now replete with drollery, now deepening 
 with pathetic touchesWhich already announced that a mind 
 of singular power and originality had begun its task in that 
 far-off country." 
 
 Other countries were as cordial as England. The new 
 stories promptly appeared in French, and were favorably crit 
 icized in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in Germany Ferdi 
 nand Freiligrath made an admirable translation of the best 
 tales, to which he prefixed a charming introduction. With 
 this generous greeting from the high places of his profession, 
 Bret Harte must have felt that his destiny was irresistible; he 
 must have dreamt, one would think, of some undivined ore of 
 inspiration to be struck in the East, to match his phenomenal 
 fortune in the West. If we allow ourselves the privilege of 
 that speculation which the true historian deplores, and wonder 
 what would have been Bret Harte s fate if in his hour of pros 
 perity he had remained on the Coast, we can see now at least 
 an equal chance of happiness for him; we may even be 
 tempted to think that his final choice of the East was a mis 
 take. His was not a nature to bear prosperity when it be 
 came luxury, and California challenged his genius rather 
 than encouraged it; the unsettled, precarious land still kept 
 
342 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 a bracing tone of danger which he needed. Had he stayed 
 in San Francisco, it seems that a busy and honored career 
 would have unfolded for him. Before he decided upon the 
 change, he had been appointed Professor of Literature in the 
 University of California, and had he entered upon his duties, 
 the teaching blood of his inheritance might have asserted it 
 self, and in any case his place in the community would have 
 been increasingly dignified and permanent. But he put his 
 literary fate boldly to the venture, and came East, and, as his 
 kindest critics must think, he never again justified the high 
 hope of his countrymen in his genius. 
 
 IV 
 
 New York was Bret Harte s new home, though he had en 
 gagements to write for magazines in other places. His work 
 was in demand, but chiefly that part of his work which dealt 
 with California. The public was not yet sated with his 
 Western World ; if he drew few pictures, and none important, 
 of any other life, his excuse can easily be found in the pres 
 sure upon him to repeat his successes. His golden fortune 
 followed him, too, in the form of innumerable opportunities. 
 Two Men of Sandy Bar, an arrangement from other stories, 
 was put together for Stuart Robson; the one long novel in his 
 works, Gabriel Conroy, was written; and one notable varia 
 tion from the frontier themes was made in Thankful Blossom, 
 written in the old Washington house at Morristown. But in 
 some fatal way the luck had changed, and it was not long be 
 fore the heralded genius had proved a disappointment to all 
 but a few loyal friends. 
 
 The simplest explanation of what happened is to say that 
 Bret Harte s head was turned by his sudden success. In the 
 East as in California he was the same gentle, fascinating 
 spirit, winning easily the good will of all who met him, and 
 leaving them with a sense of his genius. But he had become 
 
BRET HARTE 343 
 
 indolent and to a certain extent irresponsible. Not all of his 
 contracts were fulfilled, and what he did write was not of a 
 kind to advance his reputation. At the same time he got into 
 the habit of living at expensive places in the summers New 
 port and Lenox for example, and very shortly he was living 
 beyond his means, with no reasonable prospect of getting on 
 his feet again. His fame had not yet made him rich and he 
 lacked the discretion to wait quietly till his ship should come 
 in. Moreover, he had a childlike ignorance of finance, ex 
 cusable in a poet, but not likely to render him popular with 
 his creditors. It was easy for cheap scandal-mongers to cir 
 culate false reports of his business methods, some of which 
 amused him, but none of them could do him other than harm. 
 He was particularly amused, as his biographer tells us, by the 
 legend "that while he lived at Morristown he retained the 
 postage stamps sent to him for his autographs, and these ap 
 plications were so numerous that with them he paid his 
 butcher s bill; but that the slander had been denied on the au 
 thority of the butcher!" 
 
 Partly to offset the increased expenditure of Eastern life, 
 partly no doubt to satisfy the popular wish to see and hear 
 him, Bret Harte began to lecture on his California memories. 
 Several of the experiences we have quoted were first given to 
 the public in this oral form, and the belauded young author 
 seems at first to have been successful, financially and other 
 wise. Boston accepted him in a most thoroughgoing way, to 
 judge by an enthusiastic letter of James T. Fields . Artists 
 and clergymen " chaps with brains," were in his audience 
 and they had not heard so good a lecture for many a year. 
 But other places were less appreciative, and in Canada es 
 pecially Harte was thoroughly discouraged. His letters to his 
 wife in the early spring of 1873 show his distaste for lecturing 
 as an occupation; they also show that his manager was in 
 capable, and that much of the ill success of the lecturing 
 
344 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 doubtless was to be laid at that door. But it may well be 
 questioned by those of us who never saw Bret Harte whether 
 he had the qualities of a lecturer for the generation that knew 
 Phillips and Curtis and remembered Emerson. The lyceum 
 tradition was still high; the people who went to lectures did so 
 with a serious purpose; at least they expected the lecturer to 
 stand for a serious purpose, as to their minds Mrs. Stowe did 
 when she gave her readings. Whatever Bret Harte s personal 
 charm, he stood for no cause, and his measure of success on 
 the platform seems to have been but a fad. In the Autumn 
 of 1873 ne na d to report some adverse along with kindly 
 comment, in a letter from St. Louis: "I certainly never ex 
 pected to be mainly criticized for being what I am not, a 
 handsome fop; but this assertion is at the bottom of all the 
 criticism. They may be right I dare say they are in in 
 sisting that I am no orator, have no special faculty for speak 
 ing, no fire, no dramatic earnestness or expression, but when 
 they intimate that I am running on my good looks save the 
 mark ! I confess I get hopelessly furious. You will be amused 
 to hear that my gold studs have again become diamonds/ 
 my worn-out shirts faultless linen, my haggard face that of a 
 Spanish-looking exquisite, my habitual quiet and used up 
 way, gentle and eloquent languor. But you will be a little 
 astonished to know that the hall I spoke in was worse than 
 Springfield, and notoriously so that the people seemed gen 
 uinely pleased, that the lecture inaugurated the Star course 
 very handsomely, and that it was the first of the first series 
 of lectures ever delivered in St. Louis." 
 
 Later his letters home speak more openly of his cares, and 
 he tells his wife of his growing financial difficulties. He was 
 well paid for his work, and he had the seeming advantage of 
 beginning his Eastern career with great prestige; but that 
 favorable breeze of fame was probably his undoing. His ob 
 ligations to his friends could hardly have been greater than 
 
BRET HARTE 345 
 
 Hawthorne s, but the author of The Scarlet Letter escaped 
 criticism by the very apparent seriousness of his life, and by 
 his honorable discharge of his debts. Bret Harte invited com 
 ment of the undesirable kind by assuming that he could not 
 miss success. His friends claim that he finally paid his debts; 
 so John Hay assured Joaquin Miller. "Hay assured me that 
 he did not owe one dollar in New York; that he was a man of 
 singularly strict sense of honor in money matters; that he had 
 once offered to assist him when ill in Washington, but that 
 Bret Harte had seemed so hurt at the idea that he was sorry 
 he had tried to help him." 
 
 "I may mention," Joaquin Miller continues, "that after I 
 had the letter from Hay I advertised here in St. Louis for any 
 and all bills against Bret Harte, promising to pay in full with 
 out regard to the statute of limitations. Only one man, a 
 printer, put in any sort of a claim, and this one man s own 
 statement was to the effect that Bret Harte paid most of the 
 bill, claiming that was all he had agreed to pay." 
 
 It is Bret Harte s misfortune that the circumstances of this 
 period of his life, whatever they were, have passed into an un 
 pleasant tradition. He is still thought of as improvident and 
 to a certain extent indolent. This last impression of him has 
 its real ground, however, in his record abroad. In 1878 he 
 accepted a government post, as Hawthorne had done, and 
 leaving his family at Sea Cliff, he sailed for England, and 
 thence journeyed to Crefeld, Prussia, where he was to be 
 Consul. He never returned to America; so far as American 
 literature is concerned, his departure was the end of his career. 
 
 Hawthorne became in time weary of all official duties, but 
 Bret Harte was weary of his when he began. He felt his ap 
 pointment as a kind of exile, and the necessity of leaving his 
 family behind made the beginning of his work as inauspi- 
 
346 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 cious as possible. His first letter to his wife from Crefeld, 
 July 17, 1878, sets the tone of too many of his days abroad. 
 
 " I left London Friday morning and reached Paris the same 
 night, intending to come here the next day, but I found my 
 self so worn out that I lingered at Paris until last night three 
 days. ... I have audaciously travelled alone nearly four 
 hundred miles, through an utterly foreign country, on one or 
 two little French and German phrases, and a very small stock 
 of assurance, and have delivered my letters to my predeces 
 sor, and shall take possession of the Consulate to-morrow. 
 
 Mr. , the present incumbent, appears to me I do not 
 
 know how far I shall alter my impression hereafter as a very 
 narrow, mean, ill-bred, and not over-bright Puritanical Ger 
 man. It was my intention to appoint him my Vice-Consul 
 an act of courtesy suggested both by my own sense of right and 
 Mr. Lenard s advice, but he does not seem to deserve it, and 
 has even received my suggestion of it with the suspicion of a 
 mean nature. But at present I fear I may have to do it, for 
 I know no one else here I am to all appearance utterly 
 friendless; I have not received the first act of kindness or 
 courtesy from any one, and I suppose this man sees it. I 
 shall go to Bavaria to-morrow to see the Consul there, who 
 held this place as one of his dependencies, and under whose 
 direction was, and try to make matters straight. 
 
 "It s been up-hill work ever since I left New York, but I 
 shall try to see it through, please God! I don t allow myself 
 to think over it at all, or I should go crazy. I shut my eyes to 
 it, and in doing so perhaps I shut out what is often so pleasant 
 to a traveller s first impression, but thus far London has only 
 seemed to me a sluggish nightmare through which I have 
 waked, and Paris a confused sort of hysterical experience. I 
 had hoped for a little kindness and rest here. Perhaps it may 
 come. To-day I found here (forwarded from London) a kind 
 little response to my card from Froude, who invites me to 
 come to his country-place an old seaport village in Devon 
 shire. If everything had gone well here if I can make it go 
 well here I shall go back to London and Paris for a vacation 
 of a few weeks, and see Froude at least. 
 
 " At least, Nan, be sure I ve written now the worst; I think 
 
BRET HARTE 347 
 
 things must be better soon. I shall, please God, make some 
 friends in good time, and will try and be patient. But I shall 
 not think of sending for you until I see clearly that I can stay 
 myself. If the worst comes to the worst I shall try to stand 
 it for a year, and save enough to come home and begin again 
 there. But I could not stand it to see you break your heart 
 here through disappointment, as I mayhap may do." 
 
 In a few days Harte took a more cheerful view of his pros 
 pects, especially after he had seen his own works in transla 
 tion displayed for sale in a shop-window a pleasant omen 
 that his genius, if not himself, had found welcome. But this 
 first letter is perhaps significant in its hopelessness, its lack of 
 energy, its implied assumption that the world owed Bret 
 Harte a living, and the little German town in particular owed 
 him personal friendship, and that within twenty-four hours 
 of his arrival. As a matter of fact, hospitable friendship came 
 his way just after the despondent letter was written. But he 
 had already been made welcome to England, on that brief 
 passage which he refers to as "a sluggish nightmare," and 
 with all allowance for his discouraged state of mind, one is 
 puzzled by his querulousness, and his readiness to arrange at 
 once for a "vacation of a few weeks." 
 
 Whatever impression the Old World made on him, the rec 
 ord of his English days is pleasantly set down by his friends. 
 Joaquin Miller was at hand to greet him on that first visit, 
 when "on his way to the Consulate at Crefeld, up the Rhine, 
 a piteously small place for such a large man. He had a French 
 dictionary in one pocket, he told me, half laughing, and a 
 German dictionary in the other. London wanted to see him, 
 of course, and although the season was over, all the literary 
 men and women gathered about, and were simply charmed by 
 his warm-hearted and perfect ways. George Eliot asked 
 after John Hay, and told Bret Harte that one of his poems was 
 the finest thing in our language. 
 
348 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 "He could not rest until he stood by the grave of Dickens. 
 But I drove him here and I drove him there to see the living. 
 The dead would keep. But at last, one twilight, I led him by 
 the hand to where some plain letters, in a broad, flat stone, 
 just below the bust of Thackeray, read Charles Dickens. " 
 
 Joaquin Miller may well have been prejudiced in favor of 
 his old friend in a strange land. But the English themselves 
 accepted his works and himself with a generosity not usually 
 accorded to American writers, so that Harte had small reason 
 to think or speak slightingly of his stay among them. Of 
 course the depression natural in that first letter home must not 
 be taken too seriously. It is, however, all the more interest 
 ing in view of the fact that the English gave him as kind a 
 greeting as he ever had from his own people, and to this day 
 their memories of him are pleasanter on the whole than his 
 countrymen s. The point is worth illustrating at some length, 
 as an instance perhaps of the Puritan bias in American popu 
 lar criticism, which rejects Poe and in a measure Bret Harte 
 for faults of character, though their work is too high in quality 
 to escape even Puritan praise. The English attitude toward 
 both men has been more generous, or the ocean interval has 
 given them a truer perspective. Justin McCarthy, in his 
 Reminiscences, describes Bret Harte as he knew him, and the 
 whole passage deserves quotation. 
 
 "I had never heard of the author who has since become so 
 famous, when I read one day his marvellous little poem, 
 Jim. As well as I remember, the poem was not even signed 
 with his name, or if it was, the name did not convey to my 
 mind any manner of idea. But when I read the little poem 
 that wonderfully dramatic story inspired by all the soul of 
 feeling, full of humor, of fire, of pathos I felt certain that a 
 new poetic force had arisen in the English language. ! I met 
 Bret Harte in San Francisco, and I met him afterward in New 
 York. He was then a very young man it was years ago, I 
 must not say how many, but a great many, to alter slightly a 
 
BRET HARTE 349 
 
 line in Edgar Allan Poe s poem. When I went back to resume 
 my life in England, I found that the literary world had al 
 ready discovered Bret Harte, and that he was welcomed into 
 a secure fame. I well remember that my old friend Tom 
 Hood, who is long since dead, wrote to tell me that he was 
 preparing an article on the new American poet, and to ask me 
 whether I knew if Bret Harte was really the young poet s 
 name, or was only what French people never do call a nom 
 de plume. 
 
 " Since that time Mr. Bret Harte has established himself in 
 this island, first (as American Consul) in Glasgow, and after 
 wards in London, where he has now (1899) been settled for 
 many years. No one is made more cordially welcome in liter 
 ary society, and, indeed, in society of any kind which he 
 chooses to favor with his presence. I have met him at all 
 sorts of gatherings Bohemian and Belgravian and no one 
 can meet him without being the happier for the meeting. He is 
 one of the few Americans who have no especial gift of speech- 
 making, and he is not a great talker at all events, he cer 
 tainly makes no effort to shine in conversation, although it is 
 not possible to converse with him for many minutes without 
 discovering, if one did not know it before, that he is convers 
 ing with a man of original mind, of that keenest observation 
 which is keen because it is poetic, and of a humor still as 
 fresh as it was when it first created for European readers the 
 life of the canvas town and of Poker Flat. There is one house 
 in London which, somehow, I especially associate with recol 
 lections of Bret Harte. Of course he is to be met with in 
 numbers of London houses; but at this particular house of 
 which I am now thinking, one had a chance of meeting him 
 in a small congenial company, and of talking with him and 
 of hearing him talk. I am speaking of the house which has 
 for its gifted and charming hostess my friend Mrs. Henniker, 
 the accomplished sister of Lord Crewe, and daughter of 
 Monckton Milnes, the poet, scholar, and politician, after 
 wards Lord Houghton. . . . Mrs. Henniker s is just the 
 house where one who knows his way about London would 
 naturally expect to meet Bret Harte; and I have been happy 
 enough to get the chance every now and then of meeting him 
 there. The snowfall of time 5 has been showing itself very 
 
350 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 much on Bret Harte s head of late; but it is a premature snow- 
 fall; for he was a handsome young fellow when I first saw 
 him in California, and I know the number of years since that 
 time far too exactly to allow me to believe that Bret Harte has 
 yet grown old." 
 
 So much for Harte s fame in England. He became known 
 there not only through his visits, " vacations of a few weeks," 
 to Froude and others, but through the public lecturing he 
 shortly undertook in 1879. The Argonauts of 49 was the 
 lecture offered, and the English hailed it with their traditional 
 appreciation of the unusual in American writing. In the uni 
 versal applause Harte might well have thought his invasion of 
 England as fortunate as Artemus Ward s. Financially, how 
 ever, the tour was not successful, and he returned to Crefeld 
 in low spirits, having cleared, as he wrote his wife, only two 
 hundred dollars. A second tour, better managed, brought 
 him more money, and perhaps more enjoyment. It seems to 
 have been harder each time to return to Crefeld, where there 
 was little to interest him. His friends at home and abroad 
 probably used their influence; in 1880 he was removed from 
 Germany to the Consulate of Glasgow a change immediately 
 productive of greater cheerfulness when his inquisitive Scotch 
 landlady looked over his luggage and sternly asked where 
 was his Bible. 
 
 His incumbency of this office was notable for the increased 
 amount of writing he did in it, beginning with the story Found 
 at Blazing Star. So busy was he with his friendships, his 
 " vacations of a few weeks," and his literary work, that as one 
 of his best friends said, the only place he was sure not to be 
 found in was the Glasgow Consulate. It has been said that 
 the large number of stories from his pen which appeared 
 in American magazines at this time gave his government 
 the impression that he was neglecting his duties. Doubt 
 less the government had better evidence than that, and in 
 
BRET HARTE 351 
 
 1885 he was removed. For the rest of his life he lived in 
 London. 
 
 His English friends, besides Froude and William Black, 
 the novelist, were many. The letters which have been pub 
 lished show Bret Harte at his best, and give at least an indica 
 tion of the personal charm which, for those who knew him, 
 seems to have made up for substantial achievement. He 
 wrote much and planned much more; he especially desired 
 to make a place for himself in the drama, in both serious 
 plays and comic operas; one libretto he submitted to his 
 friend Sir Arthur Sullivan. But the play he had written for 
 Stuart Robson, Two Men of Sandy Bar, had been a failure, 
 the comic operas never reached the stage, and none of the 
 plays he himself wrote had any success. To this day, how 
 ever, his stories furnish more skilful dramatists with plots. 
 
 In 1902 it was evident to his friends that Bret Harte s health 
 was failing. For several summers he had enjoyed the Surrey 
 landscape and air, and he now visited Camberley, at the home 
 of his friend, Madame Van de Velde, in the hope of recuperat 
 ing. His condition did not improve, nor did it grow alarming, 
 until May 5, 1902. On that day he suffered two severe at 
 tacks of hemorrhage, and toward evening he died. He was 
 buried in Frimley churchyard, in the presence of his family 
 and a few friends. 
 
 IV 
 
 Bret Harte s prose work naturally divides into three chrono 
 logical groups the stories written in California, those written 
 in New York, and those written abroad. Of the first group, 
 however, there is a great difference between Harte s earliest 
 works and the stories that began with the Luck of Roaring 
 Camp; and in the second and first group there is, in the 
 opinion of most critics, a wide gulf between the pieces that 
 follow his true Californian inspiration and those that try to 
 
352 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 break new ground. So, in spite of the chronology, the lover of 
 Bret Harte s prose thinks of the California tales as the dis 
 tinctive part, preceded by some experimental sketches, and 
 followed even sometimes interrupted by unfortunate ex 
 cursions into regions not subject to his genius. 
 
 The preliminary sketches, which are now entirely negligible 
 S except for purposes of criticism, are obviously and con 
 fessedly in the manner of Dickens. The great story-teller was 
 Harte s master from the first. Though their gifts were es 
 sentially different, it is easy to see their points of contact, and 
 something of the Dickens strain was in the younger man s 
 work to the last. His verses on the death of his master, 
 Dickens in Camp, show what he thought he admired in the 
 Englishman s genius; it is little Nell that he praises, wander 
 ing and lost on English meadows the sentimental Dickens. 
 Such admiration is probably typical of young people, and the 
 fact that Harte kept it till 1870 proves the claim of eternal 
 youth that his friends made for him. But sentimentality was 
 not the strength of Dickens, nor of Bret Harte. Humor of a 
 greater variety, a faculty for minute observation and realism, 
 / and a sense of what Stevenson called the poetry of circum 
 stance these are the common bonds between the two writers. 
 
 Great as are Bret Harte s gifts as a humorist, perhaps his 
 twofold vein of romance and realism is his distinction. He 
 had an extraordinary power of observation and a perfect 
 memory; sentences spoken long before came to his lips with 
 the very intonation of the first utterance; his command of de 
 tail amounted to mimicry. Here he resembled Dickens, and 
 like him also he impressed people, for this reason, as being by 
 natural endowment an actor. It is thus that Watts-Dunton 
 remembered him. 
 
 "Bret Harte," he says, "had read somewhere about the 
 London music-halls, and proposed that we should all three 
 take a drive round the town and see something of them. 
 
BRET HARTE 353 
 
 At that time these places took a very different position in 
 public estimation from what they appear to be doing now. 
 People then considered them to be very cockney, very vul 
 gar, and very inane, as, indeed, they were, and were shy 
 about going to them. I hope they have improved now, for 
 they seem to have become quite fashionable. Our first visit 
 was to the Holborn Music Hall, and there we heard one 
 or two songs that gave the audience immense delight some 
 comic, some more comic from being sentimental maudlin. 
 And we saw one or two shapeless women in tights. Then we 
 went to the Oxford, and saw something on exactly the same 
 lines. In fact, the performers seemed to be the same as those 
 we had just been seeing. Then we went to other places of the 
 same kind, and Bret Harte agreed with me as to the distress 
 ing emptiness of what my fellow-countrymen and women 
 seemed to be finding so amusing. At that time, indeed, the 
 almost only interesting entertainment outside the opera and 
 the theaters was that at Evan s supper-rooms, where, under 
 the auspices of the famous Paddy Green, one could enjoy a 
 Welsh rarebit while listening to the Chough and Crow and 
 The Men of Harlech, given admirably by choir-boys. Years 
 passed before I saw Bret Harte again. I met him at a little 
 breakfast party, and he amused those who sat near him by 
 giving an account of what he had seen at the music-halls an 
 account so graphic that I think a fine actor was lost in him. 
 He not only vivified every incident, but gave verbal descrip 
 tions of every performer in a peculiarly quiet way that added 
 immensely to the humor of it. His style of acting would have 
 been that of Jefferson of Rip Van Winkle fame. This proved 
 to me what a genius he had for accurate observation, and 
 also what a remarkable memory for the details of a scene." 
 
 It is easy to recognize this gift in individual stories; in a 
 more general way Watts-Dunton s anecdote explains Bret 
 Harte s literary method, explains how he could write with 
 such fresh, convincing power of his California experiences 
 years after they occurred. But with such a talent he might 
 have been expected to observe closely in other regions of life, 
 and store up new experiences with the same relish. His 
 
354 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 failure to do so leads us to consider the other side of his genius, 
 his sense of romance, the poetry of incident. In his delight 
 ful essay Stevenson reminds us that certain places and scenes 
 inevitably suggest certain incidents as the proper drama for 
 the setting. Who of us has not felt the tragic romance of the 
 scene in Bleak House, or the comedy of scene in Pickwick 
 Papers? The dark alleys, gloomy woods, and midnight hours 
 that Dickens so gloriously refurbishes out of the honored 
 storehouse of melodrama, and fits them out with their ap 
 propriate incidents; the innumerable quaint English inns, 
 whose cozy fires suggest toasted cheese and the kettle on the 
 hob, and pleasant midnight conviviality, and whose unac 
 countable twisted hallways suggest late adventures on the 
 journey bedward out of such scenes how naturally and con 
 vincingly come the great humorist s stories ! And Bret Harte, 
 after several false starts, developed one certain literary in 
 stinct; he learned what sort of incident went inevitably with 
 the new Argonautic scenes, and every reader knows at heart 
 that his instinct was true. It has been said in his favor 
 justly, that he had to find a new kind of character and inci 
 dent to fit an entirely new scene, and that therefore he could 
 have no help from earlier writers. In this respect he is more 
 original than Dickens, whose scenes and accompanying inci 
 dents were far from new in the English novel. But Bret 
 Harte never learned to find the true incident for any other 
 scene. He mastered the single formula and used it perfectly. 
 One is inclined to wish he had been content with it. It was 
 Harte s originality and his realism that impressed Dickens; as 
 . Forster tells in his Life, he found in The Luck oj Roaring Camp 
 and The Outcasts of Poker Flat "such subtle strokes of char 
 acter as he had not anywhere else in late years discovered; 
 the manner resembling himself, but the matter fresh to a de 
 gree that surprised him; the painting in all respects masterly, 
 and the wild rude thing painted a quite wonderful reality." 
 
BRET HARTE 355 
 
 An important resemblance between Dickens and Bret 
 Harte has been found in their optimism, their humanitarian 
 hope and belief in the best of life. It is a fair question whether 
 a trait so broadly characteristic of their times can be limited 
 to a mere resemblance between two men. And in their hu- 
 manitarianism there is one marked divergence. Dickens puts 
 himself into the position of his characters, taking upon him 
 for the moment their fortunes and personalities, and making 
 the reader follow him. Bret Harte feels no such Virgilian 
 sympathy; he interests the reader in the characters, but as a 
 dramatist, not as an advocate. The sorrow of life in the Cali 
 fornia world is great. Death in many forms, accidents and 
 bereavements, make up the greater part of Harte s pictures. 
 But he cares little for the sorrow in itself; he is not disturbed 
 by it, as Dickens is; rather he accepts it with a kind of satis 
 faction, as Homer did, as the authentic mark of all human 
 experience. The effect in his work is far from severe or un 
 feeling, and in the end he enlists the sympathy of many people 
 whom Dickens could never reach. But you cannot imagine 
 Bret Harte attempting to better the social conditions of the 
 gold camps. His appreciation of them for the purposes of art 
 is too great for him to desire a reform that would destroy their 
 quality. 
 
 In his earliest work we can see Bret Harte feeling his way 
 toward realism, toward the romance of scene and incident, 
 and toward his humanitarian point of view. Mliss is a fair 
 example of that earlier style. It has a romantic heroine, with 
 a disreputable father; there is an abandoned mine that later 
 turns out to be rich; there are villains and hairbreadth escapes. 
 Little, however, is made of the scene itself, or of the characters 
 peculiar to it. The inspiration of the story is literary. That a 
 child of uncertain parents should be left an orphan and turn 
 out to be an heiress, is no new thing in fiction. 
 
 The influence of Dickens is most clear in the short sketch 
 
356 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 called High-Water Mark. The scene that suggests the tale 
 is tragic, and is described at length, Dickens-fashion, to pre 
 pare the reader s curiosity. Under the stilted, imitated rhet 
 oric it is not difficult to recognize Harte s faculty of close ob 
 servation, but he had not yet found his idiom. 
 
 "The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also mel 
 ancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, 
 the shriek of the curlew, the scream of passing brant, the 
 wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp querulous protest of 
 the startled crane, and syllabled complaint of the Kildeer 
 plover were beyond the power of written expression. Nor was 
 the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful and inspir 
 ing. Certainly not the blue heron, standing midieg deep in 
 the water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of 
 wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the de 
 jected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him 
 in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher 
 an ornithological Marius reviewing the desolate expanse; 
 nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of the 
 marsh continually, but evidently couldn t make up his mind 
 whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in the 
 reflection that after all this trouble he wouldn t be able to give 
 a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident at a glance 
 that the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly 
 on the birds, and that the season of migration was looked for 
 ward to with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the full- 
 grown, and of extravagant anticipation by the callow brood. 
 But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, 
 you should have seen it when the tide was strong and full. 
 When the damp air blew chilly over the cold glittering ex 
 panse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like 
 another tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows 
 and the sinuous line of slough ; when the great shell-incrusted 
 trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went forth on their 
 dreary purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and thither, but 
 getting no farther toward any goal at the falling tide or the 
 day s decline than the cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the 
 glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor furrow 
 
BRET HARTE 357 
 
 on the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide 
 and shut out the blue above, even as the green below had been 
 obliterated ; when boatmen, lost in that fog, paddling about in 
 a hopeless way, started at what seemed the brushing of mer 
 men s ringers on the boat s keel, or shrank from the tufts of 
 grass spreading around like the floating hair of a corpse, and 
 knew by these signs that they were lost upon Dedlow Marsh, 
 and must make a night of it, and a gloomy one at that, then 
 you might know something of Dedlow Marsh at high water." 
 
 With such a beginning as this a scene calling surely for 
 tragic circumstance, some permanent horror, Bret Harte 
 tells a mild story of a woman washed away with her infant 
 child in a high flood, and safely stranded at low tide on Ded 
 low Marsh, where Indians find her and restore her to her hus 
 band. The scene was well set, but it goes unused; Harte had 
 not yet learned to find the proper incidents for a romantic 
 situation. In the conclusion he is conscious himself that the 
 horror of the Marsh has not been caught in the story, and his 
 last words are meant for additional assurance that in spite of 
 the tale, the Marsh really is grewsome: "Not much, perhaps, 
 considering the malevolent capacity of the Dedlow Marsh. 
 But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle over it at 
 high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog, as I have, 
 to understand properly Mary s adventure, or to appreciate 
 duly the blessings of living beyond high-water mark." 
 
 VII 
 
 In The Luck of Roaring Camp Bret Harte came to his 
 own simply because he discovered the true possibilities of ro 
 mantic incident in the Western life he knew. From that time 
 he wasted no thought on the outward machinery of plot the 
 forgotten mines that suddenly prove rich, the floods and ex 
 plosions that alter the fate of the mining camps; these inci 
 dents indeed occur, but in their place and in true proportion. 
 
358 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 They no longer provide the central material for the plot. 
 Bret Harte had discovered that the romance of the coast was 
 not in outward things, but in the curious mixture of char 
 acters and races, brought together for the moment into the 
 sudden whirlpool of the mining towns, and immortalized in 
 his pages before they had fused, or any of their peculiarities 
 were dimmed. The Luck begins, not in description, but in the 
 simple statement of the incident which makes the romance of 
 the story the birth of a child in the rude camp where was no 
 other woman to attend " Cherokee Sal." All the poetry of in 
 cident that Stevenson loved is for this story contained in three 
 sentences enough to give the character of the camp, and the 
 mother, and the startling incongruity of the event: "It was, 
 perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment 
 when she most lacked her sex s intuitive tenderness and care, 
 she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine 
 associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched 
 by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was rough on 
 Sal/ and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment 
 rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in 
 his sleeve." 
 
 Out of this brief statement of the situation grows every ele 
 ment in the story; there is no such waste of romantic oppor 
 tunity as in High-Water Mark. The absence of female nurses 
 in the camp leads naturally to the installation of "Jimmy," 
 the ass, and "Stumpy," in the maternal offices, one of the 
 broadest effects of humor in the story; " Me and that ass/ 
 he would say, has been father and mother to him ! : The 
 character of the men in Roaring Camp is plainly enough in 
 dicated by the extra cards up Sandy Tipton s sleeve; and the 
 regeneration of the camp through the mere presence of the 
 child is forecast in that first unusual sympathy for its mother. 
 
 The end of the story, the destruction of the camp by the 
 mountain torrent, has been charged with sentimentalism, and 
 
BRET HARTE 359 
 
 its artistic truth questioned because it is accidental. Accident 
 certainly plays a large part in the solving of Bret Harte s 
 plots, as in The Outcasts of Poker Flat, and In the Car- 
 quinez Woods; and the use he makes of such melodramatic 
 devices is sentimental. So Dickens solves many a story by ac 
 cident. But Bret Harte s world is one in which the unex 
 pected catastrophe is the usual thing; in the mining camp ac 
 cident is normal. The fires, explosions, floods and all other 
 forms of sudden peril are implicit in the wild gamble of the 
 Argonauts life, and we can accept it, not as a method of es 
 cape for the embarrassed author, but as experience truly por 
 trayed. And the reserve of Bret Harte s manner when he 
 records such misfortunes his impassive acceptance of the 
 given fact in his own fiction, is in the very manner of the sea 
 soned gambler, who takes his luck as it comes; and the reader 
 in time learns to accept the change of fortune in these stories 
 with much the same philosophy as Mr. John Oakhurst, in 
 The Outcasts of Poker Flat, to whom "life was at best an- 
 uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in 
 favor of the dealer. 7 
 
 Perhaps it is because Bret Harte creates so successfully this 
 atmosphere of normal chance, that he can give us, with little 
 change in the facts, stories that actually happened. Ten 
 nessee s Partner is such a transcription from life. It has the 
 imaginative power of a fresh creation; it seems typical of the 
 life of the men, in incident and character, and the hero him 
 self is one of the most original in our literature. It was this 
 story that Clara Morris used to think of when she wanted to 
 shed tears in the play, and many readers have found it the 
 most touching of Bret Harte s tales. The worthless Ten 
 nessee is not without virtues; at least he is reckless and has a 
 sense of humor, and he acquires some merit vicariously from 
 the devotion of his partner. The latter has no sense of hu 
 mor an unusual lack in Bret Harte s miners; his forgiving 
 
360 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 faithfulness is in constant danger of becoming maudlin, but it 
 is saved to our respect by the unsoftened contrast of the Part 
 ner s good intentions and his outward circumstances and 
 manners the donkey cart, the grave-digging, the funeral 
 speech. 
 
 The keynote of the Argonaut life was incongruity. In that 
 one quality lay its fitness for literary use. Unlike the other 
 great frontiers recorded in books, the mining country rep 
 resented no progress of ideas, no clash of civilizations; it was 
 the scene of a crusade without a cross, as Bret Harte says, an 
 exodus without a prophet. It produced no heroic material 
 such as Cooper s frontier yielded him; the clash of Chinaman 
 and miner, fatally undignified, could not be idealized to any 
 thing like the literary proportions of the struggle between In 
 dian and settler. It produced no fund of mystery, as the In 
 dian or African frontier has done in later years; the interests 
 - J and the fortunes of the forty-niners were hopelessly frank. 
 But it produced, as its very essence, unlimited incongruity, 
 from which the romance of incident arose on one hand, and the 
 humor of character on the other. For a background there was 
 the Spanish country, with Spanish names and enough Spanish 
 traditions to endow it with some natural breath of old-world 
 poetry. Upon this aristocratic priming the gold boom laid hu 
 manity in all its colors, insanely mixed. The scholar, the crim 
 inal, the poet, the Mexican, the New Englander, the Virginian, 
 were as brothers in the camps, and individually none of them 
 was without paradox. "The greatest scamp had a Raphael 
 face, with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, 
 had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Ham 
 let; the coolest and most courageous man wis scarcely over 
 five feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid 
 manner. The term roughs applied to them was a distinc 
 tion rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of 
 "fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but 
 
BRET HARTE 361 
 
 these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate 
 force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right 
 hand; the best shot had but one eye." 
 
 It is part of the same incongruity that the wild justice of the 
 Argonaut country was administered with surprising dignity, 
 and in the worst camps standards of honor and morality at 
 times ran high. Never had optimistic romancer more effec 
 tive opportunity to idealize his subject than Bret Harte; he 
 saw daily instances of generosity on the part of reckless men 
 which would grace the Christian character anywhere, and he 
 teaches his reader to expect sudden discoveries of the god in 
 the brute, as the ancient Greek could dream of coming upon a 
 spirit of loveliness in brook and tree. Yet the converse was 
 also true, and serves to keep the picture in balance; the Ar 
 gonaut was capable, in his human moments, of markedly 
 downward paradoxes; a gambler contributing to a new Meth 
 odist church did so because the gambling-houses were monot 
 onously numerous, "and it s variety that s wanted for a big 
 town." 
 
 In one respect only is Bret Harte liable to the charge of 
 idealizing his characters; he gives them credit for personal 
 beauty, in phrase too sweeping for even the admiring reader 
 to credit. "They were singularly handsome, to a man," he 
 says. "Not solely in the muscular development and antique 
 grace acquired through open-air exercise and unrestrained 
 freedom of limb, but often in color, expression, and even soft 
 ness of outline. They were mainly young men, whose beards 
 were virgin, soft, silken, and curling. They had not always 
 time to cut their hair, and this often swept their shoulders 
 with the lovelocks of Charles II. There were faces that made 
 one think of Delaroche s Saviour." Some exaggeration of 
 affectionate memory should surely be allowed for this de 
 scription, written in after years for an English lecture, for it is 
 not surprising that the race of adventurers whose varied ante- 
 
362 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 cedents and unfailing adaptability won Bret Harte s devo 
 tion, as they have won the love of young natures since, should 
 wear such features in the hero-worshiping eyes of youth. 
 
 The stories in which Bret Harte s genius for the effective 
 scene and the romantic contrast is exhibited, are too numer 
 ous to mention; these already noted are fair examples in his 
 most typical field. But outside the specific studies of the min 
 ing camp, his genius works effectively upon the fringe of the 
 western society, he draws masterly portraits of that vaga 
 bond race who follow the frontier for no reputable reason other 
 than personal freedom. Salomy Jane s Kiss brings together 
 three striking characters of this sort old Madison Clay, 
 violent and lawless, but with a passionate code of personal 
 honor; John Dart, the horse-thief, inspired to better things 
 by the love of Madison s daughter, and Salome Jane herself, 
 indolent and proud, but capable of untold depths of passion. 
 The scenes through which the brief plot advances are pitched 
 in one high key of romance, as when the posse stop to let the 
 older horse-thief say farewell to his wife, and Salome surprises 
 John Dart, doomed and handsome, with the kiss she would 
 have bestowed only on a man about to be hanged; or when 
 Dart makes his desperate escape; or when Salome, in a con 
 versation full of surprises, learns from her father that the man 
 she kissed is at large; or when she meets Dart in the woods, 
 and after the murder, flees with him. Incidents and scene 
 here are both highly melodramatic, but the true romance is in 
 the characters, to meet any one of whom is adventure in itself. 
 
 VIII 
 
 A genius founded upon the possibilities of contrast in life 
 must inevitably be humorous, and Bret Harte s reputation is 
 largely that of a humorist. It has been claimed for him by an 
 admiring English critic that his chief good fortune is to be un- 
 American in his humor, and as the critic could not justly 
 
BRET HARTE 363 
 
 discover a resemblance to the humor of any other nation, he 
 concludes that in this respect Bret Harte is original and indi 
 vidual. Doubtless he is so, but he is one with his countrymen 
 in this important respect, that his humor grows out of an ex 
 ceeding optimism. The contrast that with him is cardinal in 
 human nature is the surprising presence of good qualities in 
 the low and the outcast. The potential goodness of Roaring 
 Camp or of Tennessee s Partner would do for one extreme of 
 this humor; at the other we have the delight of discovering 
 wisdom in Yuba Bill or Salome Jane. When Clay asks his 
 daughter what she will say to her angry and rejected suitor 
 when he hears that she kissed a condemned man, she answers, 
 that she will promise to kiss the unsuccessful lover when he is 
 on his way to be hanged ; the humor of the reply is less in what 
 is said than in the surprise that the languid Salome Jane 
 should say it. To the Englishman for whom Mark Twain in 
 his most reckless moments and Artemus Ward are the typical 
 American humorists, the analytical, keen, restrained sort of 
 wit in which Bret Harte excels must seem unnational. But 
 it must be remembered that practically all the elements in his 
 stories, even the wit, are transcripts from life; he has given 
 illustrations at some length of the commonness of what seems 
 in his pages unique. It is not in his stories that we read of the 
 teamster who, when rebuked for swearing at his cattle, re 
 plied in astonishment, Why, Miss, you don t call that swear 
 ing, do you ? Why, you ought to hear Bill Jones exhort the 
 impenitent mule!" 
 
 To exaggerate, to overstate, is, in English thought, the 
 method of American humor. To understate, however, to 
 surprise by the inadequacy of the rhetoric, is as common to 
 certain types of the Yankee mind and surely as common in 
 Bret Harte s pages as in the cockney jokes in Punch. If 
 Harte and the Connecticut Yankees are not learning their 
 style of humor from the great English comic weekly, as the lat- 
 
364 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 ter probably are not, then these Western stories may be taken 
 as the documents for a hitherto unexpressed type of American 
 humor a universal type, because rising from human nature. 
 Bret Harte s humor, far from retarding the development of 
 his stories, gives them often their speed, as the same quality 
 in the best of Mark Twain s humor say, The Man That 
 Corrupted Hadleyburg, gives speed to his stories, by contrast 
 ing the situations and the characters without further analysis. 
 What could be more concise, saying much in little, than the 
 opening of Mr. Thompson s Prodigal? 
 
 " We all knew that Mr. Thompson was looking for his son, 
 and a pretty bad one at that. That he was coming to Califor 
 nia for this sole object was no secret to his fellow-passengers ; 
 and the physical peculiarities as well as the moral weaknesses 
 of the missing prodigal were made equally plain to us through 
 the frank volubility of the parent. You was speaking of a 
 young man which was hung at Red Dog for sluice-robbing/ 
 said Mr. Thompson to a steerage passenger one day; be you 
 aware of the color of his eyes? Black, responded the pas 
 senger. Ah ! said Mr. Thompson, referring to some mental 
 memoranda, Charles s eyes was blue. " 
 
 In one respect not often noticed Bret Harte s humor is 
 bound up with the best of his genius. He had a gift for 
 parody which involved technical skill and appreciation of the 
 very highest order. Perhaps only Calverley and Swinburne 
 in the nineteenth century were better parodists of this kind. 
 i Harte seemed able to take on the very nature of the man he 
 I/ was imitating, no matter to what purpose he was putting the 
 assumed gift. As has been said, he particularly enjoyed his 
 own wonderfully accurate use of Swinburne s measure in The 
 Heathen Chinee. Only an artist as clever as himself could 
 realize all the pleasure he had in writing the Condensed 
 Novels, those extraordinary parodies of many authors, done 
 with unfaltering skill at various periods of his life. The best; 
 
BRET HARTE 365 
 
 known of these humorous and subtle criticisms on his brethren 
 in the craft is the following scene in Cooper s style : 
 
 "Genevra had not proceeded many miles before a weari 
 ness seized upon her fragile limbs, and she would fain seat 
 herself upon the trunk of a prostrate pine, which she previ 
 ously dusted with her handkerchief. The sun was just sink 
 ing below the horizon, and the scene was one of gorgeous and 
 sylvan beauty. How beautiful is nature! murmured the 
 innocent girl, as, reclining gracefully against the foot of the 
 tree, she gathered up her skirts and tied a handkerchief 
 around her throat. But a low growl interrupted her medita 
 tion. Starting to her feet, her eyes met a sight which froze her 
 blood with terror. 
 
 "The only outlet to the forest was the narrow path, barely 
 wide enough for a single person, hemmed in by trees and 
 rocks, which she had just traversed. Down this path, in 
 Indian file, came a monstrous grizzly, closely followed by a 
 California lion, a wild cat, and a buffalo, the rear being 
 brought up by a wild Spanish bull. The mouths of the three 
 first animals were distended with frightful significance, the 
 horns of the last were lowered as ominously. As Genevra was 
 preparing to faint, she heard a low voice behind her. 
 
 " Eternally dog-gone my skin if this ain t the puttiest 
 chance yet! 
 
 "At the same moment, a long, shining barrel dropped 
 lightly from behind her, and rested over her shoulder. 
 
 "Genevra shuddered. 
 
 " * Dern ye don t move ! 
 
 "Genevra became motionless. 
 
 "The crack of a rifle rang through the woods. Three 
 frightful yells were heard, and two sullen roars. Five animals 
 bounded into the air and five lifeless bodies lay upon the 
 plain. The well-aimed bullet had done its work. Entering 
 the open throat of the grizzly it had traversed his body only to 
 enter the throat of the California lion, and in the like manner 
 the catamount, until it passed through into the respective 
 foreheads of the bull and the buffalo, and finally fell flattened 
 from the rocky hillside. 
 
 "Genevra turned quickly. My preserver! she shrieked, 
 
366 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 and fell into the arms of Natty Bumpo, the celebrated Pike 
 Ranger of Donner Lake." 
 
 Bret Harte s humor is remembered especially in connection 
 with two of his characters Colonel Culpepper Starbottle and 
 Yuba Bill. The Colonel s name suggests the Dickens in 
 fluence, and it is not difficult to detect the vein of Dickens- 
 like exaggeration in the character. Colonel Starbottle is 
 
 --dsLgfe-^g^-.-^-^- 
 
 noteofor his eloquence, of the florid kind, his readiness to 
 fight duels, and his susceptibility to the fair sex traits that 
 lend themselves rather easily to the purposes of exaggerated 
 humor. <But Harte portrays the not too admirable Colonel 
 with such completeness that he is felt to be a type, not a carica 
 ture. He is unusual among Bret Harte s other creations for 
 the preponderance of the realism of his appearance over the 
 optimism; for once, the author lets us suspect or see plainly 
 more weakness in human nature than even the humor of the 
 story can quite compensate for. And Colonel Starbottle was 
 apparently among Bret Harte s few imagined characters. 
 From Virginia he once wrote to his wife a letter that indicates 
 the sort of American Colonel Newcome he intended Colonel 
 Starbottle to be: 
 
 " Imagine my sitting down to dinner with a gentleman in the 
 dress of the early century ruffles, even bag-wig complete 
 a gentleman who has visited these springs for the last forty 
 years! Who remembers Madison, Sir, and Mousie, Sir/ 
 and asked me what I thought of the poems of Matthew Prior! 
 I have seen people that I believed never existed off the stage 
 gouty old uncles in white flannel; stiff old dowagers who per 
 sonify the centennial. And all this undiscovered country 
 within four hundred miles of New York. I never had such 
 a chance in my life, and I look back upon poor Colonel Star- 
 bottle as an utter failure. If I could dress Robson and get 
 him to speak as I heard the real Virginia Colonel Starbottle 
 speak yesterday, I could make him famous." 
 
BRET HARTE 367 
 
 Perhaps it should be added that the modern Virginian is 
 tempted to think this portrait as fanciful and untrue to facts 
 as was Colonel Starbottle himself. 
 
 Yuba Bill, the stage-driver, is a finer creation, more orig 
 inal and more human. He, too, seems to owe something to 
 Dickens, and the resemblance is not simply that like Tony 
 Weller he drove a coach. He indulges habitually in the kind 
 of sarcasm that marks the speech of the Wellers, father and 
 son. When the Hon. Judge Beeswinger, Member of As 
 sembly, asked Yuba Bill if there were any political news, the 
 reply was in the Weller manner, " Not much, said Bill, 
 with deliberate gravity. The President o the United States 
 hazn t bin hisself sens you refoosed that seat in the Cabinet. 
 The ginral feelin in perlitical circles is one o regret!" But 
 Yuba Bill is otherwise far different from any type that Dickens 
 knew. He gains from that romantic contrast of scene and in 
 cident, of which Bret Harte was master. Driving the crazy 
 coach through all manner of dangers, over all sorts of coun 
 try, with the greatest variety of passenger, in the happiest at 
 mosphere of adventure, Yuba Bill is a quiet man, never lo 
 quacious, as were the Wellers; depending upon the keen an 
 alyzing power of his sarcasm for his command of men; and 
 yet essentially chivalrous and very brave. The silence in his 
 nature, and the heroic services to the community which make 
 up the usual course of his duties, invest him with a certain 
 grandeur that suggests Leatherstocking. The two men would 
 have understood each other, and one wishes they might have 
 met. 
 
 IX 
 
 Bret Harte is to be considered a novelist only by courtesy; 
 he was a writer of short stories. His one long novel, Gabriel 
 Conroy, and his shorter ones, such as Maruja, are not among 
 his successes. The difficulty seems to have been that the 
 
368 LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 
 
 length of a novel drew Bret Harte away from that contrast of 
 scene and incident upon which his genius worked. * In the 
 novels he has his hands full managing the plot, and both char 
 acters and scene escape from his control. In Gabriel Conroy 
 the outward incidents, such as the rescue of Madame De- 
 varges and the discovery of silver in the mine, determined the 
 story; the persons in the plot are of slight interest. 
 
 It is somewhat odd that Bret Harte should not have written 
 a great novel of character, for he had the ability to revive his 
 characters, John Hamlin, Oakhurst, Colonel Starbottle, in 
 many different tales; one wonders why he could not have 
 carried them with equal effect through numerous episodes. 
 The solution probably is that he wrote well only about this 
 one section of life the section he best knew; and he knew it 
 only in fragments. To write of more than one detached frag 
 ment meant to compose, and to compose meant a literary 
 effort, apart from life, unsuited to Harte s genius. The pan 
 orama of incidents in which he set his gallery of portraits, 
 gives him the effect of a novelist; he has in the mass of 
 his Western stories a volume and unity of effect such as 
 neither Poe nor Hawthorne attained in short stories. If 
 his genius had taken such a direction, the material he had 
 in hand deserved the larger form, not of the novel, but 
 the epic. 
 
 What service he performed for the world as well as for his 
 country s literature, is admirably stated in Mr. Chesterton s 
 words : He discovered the intense sensibility of the primitive 
 man. To him we owe the realization of the fact that while 
 modern barbarians of genius like Mr. Henley, and in his 
 weaker moments Mr. Rudyard Kipling, delight in describing 
 the coarseness and crude cynicism and fierce humor of the 
 unlettered classes, the unlettered classes are in reality highly 
 sentimental and religious, and not in the least like the crea 
 tions of Mr. Henley and Mr. Kipling. Bret Harte tells the 
 
BRET HARTE 369 
 
 truth about the wildest, the grossest, the most rapacious of all 
 the districts of the earth the truth that, while it is very rare 
 indeed in the world to find a thoroughly good man, it is rarer 
 still, rare to the point of monstrosity, to find a man who does 
 not either desire to be one, or imagine that he is one already." 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, The, 62 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 4 
 
 Address to the Congress of the United 
 
 States, 45 
 Address to the Government of the 
 
 United States, 45 
 Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, 
 
 326 
 
 Afloat and Ashore, 117 
 Agnes of Sorrento, 320 
 Alastor, 120 
 
 Albany Journal, The, 102 
 Alcuin, 14, 25, 43, 45 
 American Magazine, The, 196 
 American Monthly Magazine, The, 
 
 196, 197 
 
 American Register, The, 46 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, The, 237 
 Andre, Major, 61 
 Arabian Nights, The, 277 
 Arcadia, The, 182, 183 
 Argonauts of 49, The, 350 
 Artemus Ward, 350 
 Arthur Mervyn, 4, 15, 22, 27-31, 42 
 Atalanta in Calydon, 338 
 Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, 140 
 Atlantic Monthly, The, 271, 309, 318, 
 
 322, 337 
 
 Aunt Phillis Cabin, 296 
 Autumn Musings, 327 
 
 Bacon, Delia, 266 
 Bailie Nichol Jarvie, 127 
 Baldwin, Joseph Grover, 326 
 Barry Cornwall, 98 
 Beatrix Esmond, 88 
 Beauchampe, 158 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 276 
 Beecher, Lyman, 276, 286 
 Beggar Girl, The, 39 
 Benjamin, Park, 195 
 Biographical Stories for Children, 225 
 Birthmark, The, 232, 233, 235, 244 
 Black Cat, The, 211, 213 
 Bleak House, 354 
 
 Blithedale Romance, The, 262-265, 
 270 
 
 Bohemian Days in San Francisco, 
 
 33 
 
 Book of My Lady, The, 141 
 
 Border Beagles, 158 
 
 Borderers, The, see The Wept of 
 Wish-ton-Wish 
 
 Boston Miscellany, The, 225 
 
 Bracebridge Hall, 210 
 
 Bravo, The, 94-96, 99, 157 
 
 Bridge, Horatio, 188, 197, 205, 228 
 
 British Treaty, The, 45 
 
 Brooks, Noah, 334 
 
 Brown, Charles Brockden, born in 
 Philadelphia, 5; his education, 
 68; first appearance in print, 9; 
 removes to New York, n; first 
 novel, 14; marriage, 40; returns to 
 Philadelphia, 40; political writ 
 ings, 45; illness and death, 47 
 
 Brownell, W. C., 124 
 
 Burns, Robert, 18 
 
 Burr, Aaron, 311 
 
 Byron, Lord, 19, 23, 61, 71 
 
 Cain, 19 
 
 Caleb Williams, 23, 24-27, 187 
 
 Calif ornian, The, 331 
 
 Carl Werner, 157 
 
 Cask of Amontillado, The, 211, 213 
 
 Cassique of Kiawah, The, 170 
 
 Castle of Otranto, The, 15 
 
 Chainbearer, The, 117 
 
 Charlemont, 159 
 
 Charleston Courier, The, 135 
 
 Chenango Telegraph, The, 101, 102 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., 368 
 
 Childe Harold, 120 
 
 Chingachgook, 79 
 
 Citizen of the World, The, 40 
 
 City Gazette, The, 137 
 
 Clara Howard, 41 
 
 Clemens, S., see Mark Twain 
 
 Clinton, DeWitt, 83 
 
 Columbus, Christopher, 115 
 
 Commercial Advertiser, The, 102, 107 
 
 Condensed Novels, 331, 364 
 
 Confession, 159 
 
 373 
 
374 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cooper, James Fenimore: born, Bur 
 lington, 52; boyhood at Coopers- 
 town, 52-54; school and college, 
 55; naval training, 55; marriage, 
 56; removes to New York, 82; 
 foreign travel, 83; consul at Lyons, 
 84; returns to the United States, 
 97;Three Mile Point episode, 100- 
 103; the naval history, 106; illness 
 and death, 1 18 
 
 Cora Munro, 79 
 
 Cortes, Cain, and Other Poems, 137 
 
 Cosmopolitan, The, 141 
 
 Courier and Enquirer, The, 102 
 
 Crater, The, 118 
 
 Cuchullain, 177 
 
 Curtis, G. W., 221, 342 
 
 Daily South Carolinian, The, 173 
 
 Daisy Miller, 43 
 
 Damsel of Darien, The, 157 
 
 Dana, C., 221 
 
 David Swan, 205 
 
 Deerslayer, The, 43, 67, 108, 109, 
 
 110-115, 124 
 Defoe, D., 4, 92, 205 
 Derby, Captain George Horatio, 326 
 Devil in Manuscript, The, 193 
 Dickens, Charles, 64, 301, 327, 355 
 Dickens in Camp, 352 
 Dr. Heidegger s Experiment, 207, 
 
 208 
 
 Dolliver Romance, The, 271 
 Dombey and Son, 327 
 Don Quixote, 172 
 Dred, 295, 302-308 
 Dudley, Constantia, 43 
 Dunlap, William, 5, n 
 
 Early Lays, 136 
 
 Edgar Huntly, 22, 32-36, 38, 41 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 64 
 
 Edward Randolph s Portrait, 201 
 
 Egotism; Or The Bosom Serpent, 232 
 
 Elegy, Gray s, 301 
 
 Eliot, George, see George Eliot 
 
 Elsie Venner, 321 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 48, 179, 181 
 
 Endicott and the Red Cross, 201, 202, 
 
 243 
 
 Ethan Brand, an, 238, 261 
 Eutaw, 167, 168 
 Eva, 290, 294, 295, 305 
 Evangeline, 234 
 Evening Signal, The t 102 
 
 Faerie Queene, The, 182, 186, 269 
 Fall of the House of Usher, The, 16, 
 
 211 
 
 Famous Old People, 219 
 Fanshawe, 191-193, 195 
 Feathertop, 232, 233 
 Fielding, H., 327 
 Fields, J. T., 242, 253, 343 
 Fire Worship, 232 
 Flush Times of Alabama and Mis 
 sissippi, 326 
 
 Found at Blazing Star, 350 
 Forayers, The, 167, 168 
 Forrest, Edwin, 140 
 Forster, John, 354 
 Franklin, B., 4 
 Freemasonry, 23 
 Freiligrath, F., 341 
 Fremont, Mrs., 331 
 Fuller, Margaret, 221, 227 
 
 Gabriel Conroy, 342, 367, 368 
 Gamut, David, 79 
 Gentle Boy, The, 193 
 George Eliot, 347 
 Georgia Scenes, 326 
 Gladstone, W. E., 301 
 Godwin, William, 3, 4, 13, 23, 24 
 Golden Era, The, 330, 331 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 40, 327 
 Goodrich, S. G., 193, 196 
 Grandfather s Chair, 219 
 Gray Champion, The, 201, 235 
 Great Stone Face, The, 238, 261 
 Greeley, Horace, 103 
 Guy Rivers, 141-142, *75 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 301 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 326 
 
 Hard Heart, 89 
 
 Harte, Bret, born at Albany, 327; 
 goes to California, 328; marriage, 
 330; returns to the East, 342; con 
 sul at Crefeld, 345; at Glasgow, 
 350; illness and death, 351 
 
 Harvey Birch, 59-62, 73 
 
 Hathorne, William, 182 
 
 Hawkeye, see Leatherstocking 
 
 Hawthorne, Daniel, 183 
 
 Hawthorne, John, 183 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, born, in 
 Salem, 184; his mother s charac 
 ter, 185; boyhood, 186, 187; col 
 lege, 188; life in Salem 190; en 
 gaged to Sophia Peabody, 215; 
 
INDEX 
 
 375 
 
 Boston Custom-house, 216; Brook 
 Farm, 220-225; marriage, 225; 
 Salem Custom-house, 229; the 
 gift from his friends, 240; Consul 
 at Liverpool, 265; remarks on art, 
 267; return to Concord, 271; ill 
 ness and death, 272 
 Hay, John, 343, 347 
 Hayne, Paul, 169 
 Headsman, The, 94, 96, 97, 157 
 Heathen Chinee, The, 338, 364 
 Heidenmauer, The, 85, 94, 96 
 Henley, W. E., 368 
 Henry Esmond, 51, 153 
 Hester Prynne, 43, 245-250 
 High-Water Mark, 356, 358 
 History of the Byron Controversy, 
 
 The, 322 
 History of the United States Navy, 
 
 1 06 
 
 Holland, George, 140 
 Holmes, O. W., 253 
 Home As Found, 103, 105 
 Homeward Bound, 103, 104 
 Hooper, Johnson Jones, 326 
 House of the Seven Gables, The, 16, 
 
 17, 183, 184, 253-259 
 Ho wells, W. D., 49 
 Howe s Masquerade, 201, 204, 212 
 Hurry Harry, in 
 
 Ichabod Crane, 79 
 
 Illuminati, The, 24 
 
 Indian, American, 32, 34, 78 
 
 Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, 
 
 24 
 
 In the Carquinez Woods, 359 
 Irving, Washington, 4, 60, 85, 92, 
 
 209-211 
 Ivanhoe, 120, 287 
 
 Jack Tier, 118 
 
 Jane Talbot, 46 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 4, 169 
 
 Joscelyn, 173 
 
 Journal of An African Cruiser, The, 
 
 205, 227 
 
 Journal of the Plague Year, 29 
 Judith Hutter, 43, in 
 Jumping Frog of Calaveras, 331 
 
 Katharine Walton, 149, 153-156, 167 
 Keats, John, 47 
 Kemble, Fanny, 140, 253, 339 
 KenUworth) 62 
 
 Kent, Chancellor, 83 
 King, Thomas Starr, 331 
 Kingsley, Charles, 301, 308 
 Kinsmen, The, 159 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 368 
 
 Lady Eleanor s Mantle, 244 
 
 Lafayette, 86 
 
 Last Days of the Goth, 157 
 
 Last of the Mohicans, The, 7682, 
 
 1 08, no, 112, 126, 144 
 Leatherstocking, 38, 51, 61, 73, 77, 
 
 88, 90 
 Leatherstocking Tales, The, 51, 60, 
 
 65, 77, 88, 112, 119 
 Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The, 209 
 Legends of the Thirteen Republics, 76 
 Letter to General Lafayette, 86 
 Letter to His Countrymen, 99 
 Liberty Tree, The, 219 
 Ligeia, 211 
 Lionel Lincoln, 76 
 Literary Magazine and American 
 
 Register, The, 43, 44, 46 
 Longfellow, H. W., 193, 198, 206 
 Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, 326 
 Long Tom, see Tom Coffin 
 Lost Galleon, The, 332 
 Lost Pleiad, The, 137 
 Lounsbury, T. R., 62, 124 
 Lowell, J. R., 85, 259, 312 
 Luck of Roaring Camp, The, 325, 
 
 334-33 8 . 35i, 354, 357, 358, 359 
 Lyrical and Other Poems, 136 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., 301 
 
 McCarthy, Justin, 348 
 
 Magnalia, 277 
 
 Main Street, 238 
 
 Major Jones Courtship, 326 
 
 Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, 
 
 The, 364 
 Marble Faun, The, 17, 184, 213, 263, 
 
 265, 268-271 
 
 Mark Twain, 77, 331, 363, 364 
 Maroon, The, 176 
 Martin Faber, 140, 141 
 Maruja, 367 
 
 Masque of the Red Death, The, 211 
 Mayflower, The, 279, 287 
 Maypole of Merry Mount, The, 202 
 Mellichampe, 149, 154, ^57, J 59 
 Melville, Herman, 253 
 Memoirs of Carwin, 18, 24, 43 
 Memoirs of Stephen Calvert, 32 
 
376 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mercedes of Castile, 115 
 
 Miles Walling ford, 117 
 
 Miller, Joaquin, 333, 338, 345, 347, 
 
 348 
 
 Milnes, Monckton, 349 
 Milton, John, 186 
 Minister s Black Veil, The, 211 
 Minister s Wooing, The, 287, 309- 
 
 514 
 
 Miserere, Mozart s, 315 
 
 Mliss, 330, 337, 355 
 
 Manikins, The, 100 
 
 Montcalm, 77 
 
 Monthly Magazine and American 
 
 Review, The, 32, 44 
 Mosses from An Old Manse, 226, 227, 
 
 231-238, 250, 261 
 Mr. Thompson s Prodigal, 364 
 My First Book, 332 
 Mysteries of Udolpho, The, 15, 126 
 My Wife and I, 321 
 
 National Era, The, 288 
 
 Natty Bumpo, 61, 366 
 
 New Adam and Eve, The, 232 
 
 Newcome, Colonel, 91 
 
 New England Magazine, The, 193 
 
 New York Independent, The, 315 
 
 Norna, 43, 169 
 
 North American Review, The, 198 
 
 Notes of Travel, 266 
 
 Notions of the Americans, 85 
 
 Oak Openings, The, 118 
 
 Old Town Fireside Stories, 320 
 
 Old Town Folks, 320, 321, 323 
 
 Oneida Whig, The, 102 
 
 Orion, 160 
 
 Ormond, 22, 24, 27, 41 
 
 Our Old Home, 266, 271 
 
 Outcasts of Poker Flat, The, 338, 354, 
 
 359 
 Overland Monthly, The, 334, 341 
 
 Parkman, Francis, no, 124 
 Partisan, The, 149, 153, 159, 176 
 Pathfinder, The, 56, 108-110 
 Paul Jones, 70, 71, 73 
 Peabody, Elizabeth, 214 
 Pearl ofOrr s Island, The, 315-317 
 Pelayo, 157 
 Peter Parley, 196 
 Philanthropist, The, 286 
 Phillips, Wendell, 342 
 Phcenixiana, 326 
 
 "Phoenix, John," 326 
 Pickwick Papers, 354 
 Pierce, Franklin, 272 
 Pilgrim s Progress, The, 92, 133, 
 
 168, 186 
 Pilot, The, 68-74, 75, 116, 119, 124, 
 
 126 
 
 Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 135 
 Pioneers, The, 66, 68, 76, 77, 79, 83, 
 
 87, 98, 103, 108, in, 114, 116, 117, 
 
 144 
 
 Pirate, The, 43, 68, 69, 114 
 Poe, E. A., 1 6, 38, 179, 211-213, 349 
 Poganuc People, 316, 321, 323 
 Prairie, The, 67, 87-91 
 Precaution, 57, 59 
 Provincial Tales, 193 
 Punch, 337, 363 
 Puritans of America, see The Wept 
 
 of Wish-ton-Wish 
 
 Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 15 
 Rappaccini s Daughter, 211, 232, 
 
 235, 236 
 Rashleigh, 125 
 
 Recollections of a Gifted Woman, 266 
 Red Rover, The, 71, 74-76, 91, 93, 
 
 116, 118 
 
 Redskins, The, 117 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, 341 
 Richard Hurdis, 158 
 Rill from the Town Pump, A, 205 
 Rip Van Winkle, 209 
 Robin Hood, 61, 120 
 Rob Roy, 60, 61, 120, 125, 127 
 Robson, Stuart, 342 
 Roger Chillingworth, 37 
 Roger Malvin s Burial, 193, 232, 235, 
 
 236 
 Russell s Magazine, 169 
 
 Sabbath, The, 280 
 Salomy Jane s Kiss, 362 
 Satanstoe, 117 
 
 Scarlet Letter, The, 4, 200, 201, 213, 
 216, 229, 230, 231, 239-253, 257, 
 
 345 
 Scott, Walter, 37, 48, 51, 52, 54, 63, 
 
 68, 69, 81, 127, 286 
 Scout, The, 159 
 Sea Lions, The, 118 
 Seven Tales of My Native Land, 195 
 Shakspere, William, 181, 186 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 4, 13, 14, 18, 
 
 19, 23, 47 
 
INDEX 
 
 377 
 
 Sights from a Steeple, 206 
 
 Simms, William Gilmore, born in 
 Charleston, 132; his parents, 131, 
 brought up by his grandmother, 
 132; enters law office, 133; engaged 
 to be married, 134; the Charleston 
 mob, 138; becomes bankrupt, 138; 
 goes North, 139; second marriage, 
 154; attitude towards the war, 159- 
 160, 171; Woodlands burned, 172; 
 illness and death, 175 
 
 Simms Magazine, 160 
 
 Sketch Book, The, 60, 65 
 
 Sketches of a History of Car sol, 14 
 
 Sketches of a History of the Carrils 
 and Ormes, 14 
 
 Sky Walk, 14 
 
 Smollett, Tobias, 327 
 
 Snow Image, The, 189, 197, 238, 261 
 
 Southern Press, The, 296 
 
 Southern Quarterly Review, 160 
 
 Southern and Western Monthly, 160 
 
 Southron, The, 160 
 
 South Sea Idyls, 331 
 
 Southward Ho! 166 
 
 Spectator, The, 187, 209 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 186 
 
 Spy, The, 56, 58-66, 67, 68, 69, 76, 
 82, 91, 119, 124, 126, 149, 150 
 
 Starbottle, Colonel, 366, 368 
 
 Stoddard, Charles Warren, 331, 334, 
 338 
 
 Stowe, Calvin E., 281 
 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, born at 
 Litchfield, 276; girlhood, 277-279; 
 Lane Seminary, 279; marriage, 
 281; southern travel, 284; Bow- 
 doin, 287; Andover, 298; travel 
 abroad, 299; second trip abroad, 
 308; Hartford, 319; the Byron 
 controversy, 321; illness and death, 
 322 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 168 
 
 Sun, The New York, 221 
 
 Sunday at Home, 206 
 
 Sunday Atlas, The, 327 
 
 Sunny Memories, 302 
 
 Supplement to the Plays of William 
 Shakspere, 162 
 
 Sword and Distaff, The, 162 
 
 Tablet, The, 136, 138 
 Tales of the Argonauts, 329 
 Talleyrand, 53 
 Tanglewood Tales, 261 
 
 Tempest, The, 257 
 
 Tennessee s Partner, 338, 359 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 51, 88, 91, 129 
 
 Thankful Blossom, 342 
 
 Thompson, W. T., 326 
 
 Thoreau, H. D., 227 
 
 Ticknor, W. D., 272 
 
 Token The, 193, 195 
 
 Toll-Gatherer s Day, The, 205 
 
 Tom Coffin, 51, 60, 75 
 
 Tribune, The New York, 102 
 
 Tri-Color, The, 137 
 
 True Story of Lady Byron s Life, 
 
 The, 322 
 
 Trumpet Major, The, 326 
 Twice Told Tales, 189, 190, 197, 
 
 200-213, 225, 232, 242, 243, 258, 
 
 261 
 
 Two Admirals, The, 115 
 Two Men of Sandy Bar, 342, 351 
 
 Uncas, 35, 51, 79 
 
 Uncle Lot, 279, 280 
 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin, 48, 51, 180, 276, 
 
 283, 284,4^2=2^)297, 300, 303, 
 
 304, 317, 318 
 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin, Key to, 288, 297 
 Universal History on the Basis of 
 
 Geography, 196 
 Upside Down; or, Philosophy in 
 
 Petticoats, 118 
 
 Valley of Wish-ton-Wish, The, see 
 
 The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish 
 Vasconselos, 166 
 Vernon, Diana, 37, 43 
 Vicar of Wakefield, The, 133 
 Views and Reviews, 162 
 Virginians, The, 153 
 Virtuoso s Collection, A, 225, 233 
 
 Wake field, 207, 208 
 Walpole, Horace, 15 
 Ward, Artemus, 363 
 Washington, George, 62 
 Water Witch, The, 93, 116 
 Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 352 
 Waverley, 120 
 
 Ways of the Hour, The, 118 
 We and Our Neighbors, 321 
 Webb, Charles Henry, 331 
 Webster, Daniel, 287 
 Wedding Knell, The, 211 
 Weed, Thurlow, 103, no 
 Weekly Magazine, The, 27 
 
378 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, The, 91 
 Western Monthly, The, 279 
 Wieland, 14-22, 42, 49 
 William Wilson, 211, 212 
 Willis, N. P., 85 
 Wing and Wing, 115, 116 
 Wonder Book, A, 260, 261 
 Woodcraft, 163-166, 176 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 54, 81 
 Wyandotte, 116 
 
 Yale College, 55 
 Yemassee, The, 142-149, 175 
 Young Goodman Brown, 237 
 Young Provincial, The, 193 
 Yuba Bill, 363, 366, 367 
 

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