Chapter VII: Part 7

=The Forties.=--The decade of 1840-50 saw the advent of no writers of enduring reputation. “Charles Elwood, or The Infidel Converted” (1840), a kind of philosophical autobiography by Orestes A. Brownson (1803-76), is really an essay in the guise of a novel, and can here only be mentioned. Brownson was successively a Presbyterian, a Universalist, a Unitarian, and a Roman Catholic; as a thinker, he might be called a Christian Socialist. Epes Sargent (1813-80), a student at Harvard College, who became a journalist and a popular dramatist, was the author of several juveniles, two of which, “Wealth and Worth” (1840) and “What’s to be Done?” (1841), had a large sale; and of two now forgotten novels, “Fleetwood, or The Stain of Birth” (1845) and “Peculiar, a Tale of the Great Transition” (1864), a story of changes in the South in the Civil War. Washington Allston’s “Monaldi” (1841), an Italian romance with an Othello-like _motif_, really belongs to an earlier generation, having been written as early as 1821, and intended apparently for publication in Dana’s _Idle Man_. It is a powerful but harrowing story in which the progress of jealousy is traced throughout its course. Maria J. McIntosh (1803-78), losing her fortune in the panic of 1837, adopted authorship as a means of support and wrote a number of juveniles, the first of which was “Blind Alice” (1841), and all of which were intended to illustrate the moral sentiments. Some of her stories were reprinted in London; and she continued to write for more than twenty years. Maria Brooks (1795-1845), a once highly praised but now forgotten poet, in 1843 privately printed a prose romance, “Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri,” which was really an autobiography, including much poetical description and reflection.

_Sylvester Judd._--The most successful picture of old New England life ever written, down to the time of its publication (1845), was “Margaret, a Tale of the Real and Ideal.” It was this book which Lowell, in his “Fable for Critics,” spoke of as

the first Yankee book
With the _soul_ of Down East in ’t, and things farther East,
As far as the threshold of morning, at least,
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true,
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new.

The author, Sylvester Judd (1813-53), was a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Yale College, who had become a Unitarian clergyman and settled in Augusta, Maine; and his purpose in writing was “to promote the cause of liberal Christianity.” Had he kept this purpose more in the background, his place among the greater novelists would have been sure; for he had observed closely every phase of Puritan life and possessed rare gifts of realistic and dramatic story-telling. Not only does he correctly describe the externals of New England places and people, down to the niceties of dialect; but he also interprets with rare and poetic insight the moral and spiritual conflicts into which his characters are drawn. Another novel similar to “Margaret,” “Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family,” appeared in 1850; it deals with the career of a New England country youth. Like Margaret, the hero has altogether too many “experiences”--introduced in order to point the moral. Yet on the whole the realism of these novels is wholesome and fresh and true.

_Herman Melville._--A follower of Cooper--though at some distance in point of quality--in writing stories of the sea, was Herman Melville (1819-91). A native of New York, he spent the greater part of the years 1837-44 in voyages to the Pacific. Of his observations and exciting experiences he made good use in a long series of tales, the first of which, “Typee” (1846), narrated his adventures in the Marquesas. The general perception of the growing importance of the Pacific doubtless aided in securing for Melville’s stories the most favourable reception, both in America and in England. “Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas” (1847) continued the earlier story, with no less vivid pictures of sailor life, fights with savages, and thrilling escapes. His next story, “Mardi, and a Voyage Thither” (1849), was an attempt at a philosophical romance contrasting European civilisation and Polynesian savagery, and, though it contained some able descriptions, its vagaries and lack of sobriety doomed it to failure. “Redburn, His First Voyage” (1849) tells of a journey to England, and includes some realistic horrors; it could hardly be popular. “The White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War” (1850) is a photographic narrative of experiences on board a United States frigate. Melville’s masterpiece was “Moby Dick, or The Whale” (1851); though an uneven work of excessive length, written partly in a strained, Carlylesque style, it nevertheless fills the reader with the fascination of the sea. The fierce contest of Captain Ahab with the great whale, which “becomes a representative of moral evil in the world,” is not unworthy of the pen of a greater writer. Melville never afterward came up to the standard of this work, though he wrote several other stories and novels, among them “Pierre, or The Ambiguities” (1852), “Israel Potter” (1855), narrating the adventures of a Revolutionary soldier, and praised by Hawthorne for its portraits of Paul Jones and Benjamin Franklin, “The Piazza Tales” (1856), and “The Confidence Man” (1857).

_Mrs. Judson and Others._--Mrs. Emily Chubbuck Judson (1817-54), third wife of the celebrated Baptist missionary Dr. Adoniram Judson, and best known by her pen name of “Fanny Forester,” in her “Alderbrook” (1846), a collection of village sketches, described girl life in New England, winning a reputation which lasted for many years. Peter Hamilton Myers (1812-78), a Brooklyn lawyer, was for a brief time remembered for his historical romances, “The First of the Knickerbockers, a Tale of 1673” (1848), “The Young Patroon, or Christmas in 1690” (1849), “The King of the Hurons” (1849), and “The Prisoner of the Border, a Tale of 1838” (1857). Charles Wilkins Webber (1819-56), the son of a Kentucky physician, inherited from his mother a fondness for out-of-door life, and spent some years in Texas. Then he tried in succession medicine, theology, and authorship. His stories and descriptions of South-western life and adventure include “Old Hicks the Guide” (1848), “The Hunter Naturalist” (1851-53), illustrated by his wife, “Tales of the Southern Border” (1852), and “Shot in the Eye” (1853), his best story. He died in the battle of Rivas, in Central America.

_Mayo_, _Kimball_, _and Wise_.--William Starbuck Mayo (1812-95), a New York physician, travelled in the Barbary States, and on returning home wrote two popular novels, “Kaloolah, or Journeyings in the Djebel Kumri” (1849) and “The Berber, or The Mountaineer of the Atlas” (1850). The former purports to be the autobiography of Jonathan Romer, who, after numerous exciting adventures in the American woods, goes to Africa, has various hair’s-breadth escapes, fights with slave-traders and natives, and marries a beautiful dusky princess. In its satirical remarks on civilised usages it imitates “Gulliver.” “The Berber,” a story of more regular construction, is still enjoyable. It recounts events supposed to take place in Africa at the close of the seventeenth century, and like its predecessor contains minutely accurate descriptions of tropical scenery and animal life. Richard B. Kimball’s “St. Leger, or The Threads of Life” (1849), reprinted from _The Knickerbocker_, was a serious attempt to depict a mind in pursuit of truth in a story in which romantic adventure plays some part; but the characters are not strongly marked. Henry Augustus Wise (1819-69), son of a naval officer and himself a lieutenant in the Navy, saw the humorous and comic side of the seaman’s life, and chronicled his impressions in “Los Gringos, or An Inside View of Mexico and California” (1849), and still more successfully in his sprightly and sentimental “Tales for the Marines” (1855), in which all sorts of marvellous and amusing things happen.

=The Decade of 1850-60.=--It can hardly be said that the next decade, 1850-60, saw any great improvement in the quality of our fiction; but there is evident an increasing preference for realistic studies of home life, and a growing indifference to the highly wrought and more or less melodramatic romances which had delighted the readers of an earlier day. For many reasons, Americans desired to see themselves in fiction, doing their daily work, struggling with everyday temptations, yielding or conquering according to their native strength or weakness. There was a growing sense of the artistic--and moral or didactic--value of common life. The reaction against romance was inevitable, and was no doubt accelerated by the coming of railroads, telegraphs, Atlantic cables, and the controversy over slavery.

_Ik Marvel._--Significant, then, was the popularity, which has scarcely waned, of “Ik Marvel’s” two books, “Reveries of a Bachelor” (1850) and “Dream Life” (1851). The author, Donald G. Mitchell (born in 1822), was a product of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, whose experience had been enriched by European travel. The pernicious influence of Carlyle upon Mitchell’s style is too evident; but the sentiment, or sentimentality, the enthusiasm, the tender pathos of these slight stories have appealed to thousands. In his “Dr. Johns” (1866), Mitchell brought the stern Calvinistic theology of New England into relief by contrasting it with French frivolity.

_Edward Everett Hale._--Edward Everett Hale’s literary activity has extended over something like sixty years. Born in Boston in 1822, and graduated from Harvard at seventeen, he became a journalist, story-teller, minister, historian, and antiquarian. His “Margaret Percival in America,” a religious novel, appeared in 1850, and he has since written others, “If, Yes, and Perhaps” (1868), “Ten Times One Is Ten” (1870), “In His Name” (1874), a truthful and glowing narrative of the Waldenses, “Philip Nolan’s Friends” (1876), the gallant hero of which, the Kentuckian Philip Nolan, was “the protomartyr to Mexican treachery,” “The Fortunes of Rachel” (1884), a slight but clever tale, and “East and West” (1892). But Dr. Hale is best known in literature by his short stories. “My Double and How He Undid Me,” published in _The Atlantic_ for September, 1859, was a clever and amusing piece which made a great hit and immortalised some of the bores of his parish. “The Man Without a Country” (_The Atlantic_, December, 1863) brought its author national reputation and has become a classic. It has been justly pronounced “the best sermon on patriotism ever written.” Speaking of sermons recalls the criticism often applied to Dr. Hale’s stories, that the moral is too obvious; in general, however, the moral cannot be called obtrusive and hardly interferes with the general effect of the story.

_Alice Cary._--Alice Cary (1822-71), better known as a poet, wrote pleasantly appreciative sketches of her Ohio home under the title of “Clovernook, or Recollections of our Neighbourhood in the West” (1852); a second series of similar sketches was published in 1853. Her three novels, “Hagar” (1852), “Married, not Mated” (1856), and “The Bishop’s Son” (1857), were characterised by power of observation and by careful literary workmanship.

_The Warners._--Susan Warner (1819-1885), whose earlier work was done under the pen name of “Elizabeth Wetherell,” became well known through the publication (1850) of her first book “The Wide, Wide World.” This was a story of domestic life on the upper Hudson, which showed an exceptional power of description and of character study, and which secured very promptly wide acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic. With the single exception of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it proved to be the most popular novel written up to that date in America, and it had the compliment of reproduction in a long series of unauthorised editions in Europe. “The Wide, Wide World” was followed by a series of stories, of which the most important were “Queechy” (1852), “The Hills of the Shatemuc” (1858), “Diana” (1859), “Wych Hazel” (1860), and “The Gold of Chickaree” (1861). She collaborated with her sister, Anna Bartlett Warner (born in 1820), in the production of “Dollars and Cents,” which was issued in 1853, and in some successful books for the young, “Mr. Rutherford’s Children,” etc.

_Harriet Beecher Stowe._--A diligent and painstaking writer of fiction for thirty years, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96) is to-day remembered only as the author of a single book, and that one almost her first. The daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher of Connecticut, she was born into a remarkably gifted family and inherited the best that New England Puritan culture could give. At twenty-one she was married to Professor Calvin E. Stowe, then a teacher in the divinity school in Cincinnati. Here she had an opportunity of studying the workings of slavery, and as a result entered heart and soul into the anti-slavery movement. In the year in which Hawthorne published his “House of the Seven Gables,” Longfellow “The Golden Legend,” and Melville “Moby Dick,” she began in _The National Era_ a serial which aroused wide and bitter discussion. The next year (1852), “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared in book form. Over three hundred thousand copies, according to the author, were sold within a year. The part played by the book in hastening the “irrepressible conflict” of the Civil War cannot be estimated. It is not hard to see blemishes in the story: tame description, careless and loose construction, the tone of the preacher; but these are rendered insignificant by the great merits of the book, its frequent touches of humour, its range and variety of characters, who are not merely types but are graphically individualised, its broad humanity, its fierce earnestness, its kindling emotion. These may not suffice to put the story among the great and enduring works of literature; but it will be long before America outgrows her fondness and admiration for it. Mrs. Stowe followed this book in 1856 with “Dred” (republished in 1866 as “Nina Gordon”), in which she continued to depict effectively the position of slavery with reference to the church and the law, and the defeat by mob violence of a high-minded slave-owner who sought to purify the unholy system. A more deliberate and carefully planned work than “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it has generally been considered as inferior in power, though Harriet Martineau thought it superior. Old Tiff is one of the great creations of negro character. As a picture, in the main true, of old-fashioned Southern life, it has a lasting charm. In “The Minister’s Wooing” (1859), Mrs. Stowe turned to New England life at the beginning of the century, and dealt with the influence of the older Calvinism upon devout and sensitive minds. In artistic construction and effect it has been pronounced superior to all her other works; some of the characters, for example, Mary Scudder and Dr. Hopkins, are notably strong and impressive. Yet, like all her later works, it has been overshadowed by that one which was struck out in a white heat of passionate appeal. “The Pearl of Orr’s Island” (1861) is a quiet story of Puritan life on the Maine coast, insufficiently relieved by a few thrilling episodes. In “Agnes of Sorrento” (1862), the result of a visit to Europe, Mrs. Stowe turned to Italy in the days of Savonarola, but achieved even less success than George Eliot did in the next year with “Romola.” In 1863, the Stowes settled permanently at Hartford, Connecticut; and after the war they acquired a winter residence in Florida. The best of Mrs. Stowe’s numerous later books is probably “Oldtown Folks” (1869), dealing with life in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, about the year 1800, and portraying some very realistic characters. Such stories as “Pink and White Tyranny” (1871), “My Wife and I” (1871), and “We and Our Neighbours” (1875), in which she aimed to reform fashionable society, though successful in respect to sales, were from an artistic point of view decided failures. In “Sam Lawson’s Fireside Stories” (1871) and “Poganuc People” (1878), she returned to New England Yankees and the life she most successfully drew. On the whole it must be said that her reputation, while it lasts, will rest chiefly upon “Uncle Tom” and the New England stories.

_John T. Trowbridge._--One of the most popular of writers for boys is John Townsend Trowbridge (born in 1827). Educated in the common schools, he learned Latin, Greek, and French by himself, taught school, worked a year on an Illinois farm, and then settled down to writing in New York City. Some of his books are “Father Brighthopes” (1853), “Burrcliff” (1853), “Martin Merrivale” (1854), “Neighbour Jackwood” (1857), a famous anti-slavery novel, perhaps a good second to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in influence and popularity, “Cudjo’s Cave” (1864), and “Coupon Bonds, and Other Stories” (1871). He has been a prolific writer of healthful and finished stories for boys. John Burroughs has well said of him: “He knows the heart of a boy and the heart of a man, and has laid them both open in his books.”

_John Esten Cooke._--A romancer of the old school was John Esten Cooke (1830-86), a younger brother of Philip Pendleton Cooke. A native of Virginia, he found inspiration in the romantic history of that State, drawing many of his characters from life. His first important publication was “Leather Stocking and Silk, or Hunter John Myers and His Times” (1854); his best story proved to be “The Virginia Comedians, or Old Days in the Old Dominion” (1854), which deals with the period just preceding the Revolution, and which, with its youthful enthusiasm and interesting descriptions of colonial manners, has been called by some critics the best novel written in the South down to the Civil War. After serving in the Confederate army, Cooke sought to utilise his military experiences in several dramatic stories; but his reputation had been made, and his day had gone by.

_Maria S. Cummins._--In “The Lamplighter” (1854), Maria S. Cummins (1827-66) achieved a success comparable to that of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Ben Hur.” In “Mabel Vaughan” (1857) she produced probably a better book. Both of her stories, however, while in the main true delineations of girl and home life, are too evidently written with a didactic aim, and are at times laboured and diffuse. Her other stories, “El Fureidis” (1860), a story of Palestine, and “Haunted Hearts” (1864), are now entirely forgotten.

_Mrs. Ann Sophia Stephens._--Mrs. Ann Sophia Stephens (1813-86) was in the fifties and sixties an immensely popular novelist. She was the daughter of John Winterbotham, an English woollen manufacturer who had come to America, and was born at Humphreysville, Connecticut. In 1831, she married Edward Stephens, a publisher, and began in 1835 to edit _The Portland Magazine_, founded by her husband. Later, she edited _The Ladies’ Companion_ and became an associate editor of _Graham’s_ and _Peterson’s_, to which she contributed over twenty serials. Her first elaborate novel, “Fashion and Famine” (1854), had a very large circulation and was three times translated into French. A novel of affected intensity, it contained some excellent delineation of character. Among her other works were “Zana, or The Heiress of Clare Hall” (1854), republished as “The Heiress of Greenhurst,” “The Old Homestead” (1855), “Sibyl Chase” (1862), “The Rejected Wife” (1863), “Married in Haste” (1870), “The Reigning Belle” (1872), and “Norton’s Rest” (1877). She was attentive to details and wrote in a condensed and forcible style.

_Marion Harland._--Marion Harland is the pseudonym under which Mrs. Mary Virginia Terhune (born in 1831), a Virginian of New England ancestry, became known for a number of short stories, novels, and miscellaneous matter. Her fiction is of the romantic type, full of incident, and dealing with brave personages. Some of her stories are “Alone, a Tale of Southern Life and Manners” (1854), “The Hidden Path” (1855), “Moss-Side” (1857), “Miriam” (1860), “Nemesis” (1860), “Husks” (1863), “Sunnybank” (1866), “At Last” (1870), “Judith” (1883), and “A Gallant Fight” (1888). She has been editorially connected with a number of juvenile magazines.

_Curtis_, _Willis_, _Holland_.--George William Curtis belongs in the main, of course, with the essayists, where his life will be narrated. He was the author of “Prue and I” (1856), a series of papers written originally for _Putnam’s_, and together forming a slight story of charming domestic life, in which sentiment, fancy, and a broad optimistic philosophy are pervasive features; and of an unsuccessful novel, “Trumps” (1861), which he began in 1859 as a serial in _Harper’s Weekly_. In view of the broad experience of its author, his fondness for good novels, his discriminating taste, his facility in expression, this failure of “Trumps” was remarkable. The truth is that Curtis had not rightly estimated his powers. He could not manage an elaborate plot with skill, and he also made the same mistake that marred the work of many writers already noticed--he was too much concerned to point the moral. The general effect, as Mr. Cary points out,[14] is that “Trumps” becomes “a Sunday-school story, written by a man of rare gifts, some of which betray the elusive charm of genius, but still essentially of that class, producing, and apparently intended to produce, the impression that in the end virtue triumphs and vice comes to a miserable end.” In the long run, this is eternally true; but the great artists do not talk about it very much. A similar failure, though for different reasons, was the one novel written by the prolific Nathaniel P. Willis, “Paul Fane, or Parts of a Life Else Untold” (1857), an early and dull experiment in the field of international novels. It was a story whose general distortion of things amounted almost to caricature, since it was based on superficial rather than deep and careful observation of character. In the same year Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-81) made his _début_ in the field of fiction with “The Bay Path,” a story of the settlement of the Connecticut Valley, filled largely with historical characters, and generally faithful to the manners and thought of the age portrayed. A more ambitious story, “Miss Gilbert’s Career” (1860), is a realistic modern novel in which a characteristic Yankee community is described with great fidelity. His later novels, “Arthur Bonnicastle” (1873), “The Story of Sevenoaks” (1875), and “Nicholas Minturn” (1877), cannot on the whole be said to possess high literary merit; the author was avowedly a moralist, and the best that can be said of them is that they did no harm.

_Major John William de Forest._--Major John William de Forest (born in 1826) began writing fiction with a very romantic and very poor novel called “Witching Times,” published serially in _Putnam’s_, 1856-57, and followed it with a number of works which made him one of the most popular novelists of the seventies--“Seacliff” (1859), “Miss Ravenel’s Conversion” (1867), a book out of his own experience, and his first in realistic vein, “Overland” (1871), “Kate Beaumont” (1872), “Honest John Vane” (1875), “Playing the Mischief” (1875), and many others. Of “Miss Ravenel’s Conversion” Mr. Howells has said: “It was one of the best American novels that I had known, and was of an advanced realism before realism was known by that name.”

_Robert Lowell._--In 1858 appeared “The New Priest of Conception Bay,” in which the Rev. Robert Traill Spence Lowell (1816-91), an elder brother of James Russell Lowell, and an Episcopal clergyman, painted in bright and cheerful colours the rural life of Newfoundland with which he became familiar during his sojourn at Bay Roberts in 1843-47. No truer picture of the simple fisher folk of Newfoundland was ever produced--even to a delicate discrimination of dialects. Mr. Lowell’s reputation was not ill sustained by his later though less known books, “Antony Brade” (1874) and “A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town” (1878), which dealt with the quaint life in the Dutch villages of eastern New York.

_Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford._--Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford (born in 1835), a native of Maine who has passed most of her life in Massachusetts, made her reputation with a short story of Parisian life, “In a Cellar,” in _The Atlantic_ in 1859. In “Sir Rohan’s Ghost” (1859), “The Amber Gods” (in _The Atlantic_, 1860), which gave her a considerable reputation, “Azarian,” (1864), and “A Thief in the Night” (1872), she produced sombre works vividly imaginative and intense in feeling. She was among the first to work the mine of ghostly romance. Her stories have never been very popular; her fondness for the sensuous and the splendid repels many readers. Yet for sheer and overwhelming intensity and for complete success in producing the effect sought, “A Thief in the Night” must be given a high place as a work of art.

_Mrs. Miriam Coles Harris._--Mrs. Miriam Coles Harris (born in 1834), who has spent most of her life in and near New York City, wrote a number of stories popular in their day, some of them being still read. “Rutledge” (1860) and “The Sutherlands” (1862) were widely circulated. Her later stories include “A Perfect Adonis” (1875), “Phœbe” (1884), “Missy” (1885), and “An Utter Failure” (1890).

_Theodore Winthrop._--Theodore Winthrop (1828-61) deserves more than passing mention, not so much for what he actually accomplished as for what his brief life gave promise of doing. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, a descendant of Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut and at twenty a graduate of Yale, he travelled much abroad, went to Panama in the employment of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and afterward sojourned in California and Oregon, visiting also the island of Vancouver and some of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s stations. He was admitted to the bar in 1855, but became more fond of politics and literature than of law. For several years, he worked on his novels; but though one was accepted for publication, none appeared in his lifetime. At the opening of the war he went to the front with the Seventh New York Regiment, and fell, bravely fighting, at Great Bethel. His descriptions of his march to Washington, in _The Atlantic Monthly_, had attracted much attention, and after his death his novels appeared in rapid succession, “Cecil Dreeme” in 1861 and “John Brent” and “Edwin Brothertoft” in 1862. The first is a gruesome tale of life in New York, full of broad sweep and passion, immature but not devoid of power. “John Brent,” the best of his stories, is an imaginative tale into which he wove a record of his Western experiences; it “had the merit, in its day especially, of delineating Western scenes and characters with sympathy and skill, at a time when the West was almost virgin soil to literature.” “Edwin Brothertoft” is a melodramatic story of the American Revolution, at times crude in expression, but strong in plot and in its play of light and shade. Had Winthrop lived, our literature beyond question would have been far richer. He comprehended as did few others the deep throbbing life of America, not only in its externals but in its less obvious features; and abating his youthful “breeziness,” he would doubtless have reproduced some parts of that life on enduring canvas.

_Fitz-James O’Brien._--Another brilliant writer whose career was cut short by the war was Fitz-James O’Brien (1828-62), a native of County Limerick, Ireland. He was educated at the University of Dublin; and after spending his inheritance of £8,000 in London, he came to America in 1852 and from that time on devoted himself to literature. In New York he became a prominent figure among the Bohemian set and won distinguished social and literary success. Besides much clever verse, he wrote for the magazines some marvellously ingenious tales, for example “The Diamond Lens,” “The Wondersmith,” “The Golden Ingot,” and “Mother of Pearl.” The reader is occasionally reminded of Poe and Hawthorne, but is more often led to wonder why O’Brien has so long lain in neglect; for some of his stories are powerful in a high degree. Like Winthrop, O’Brien in 1861 became a soldier in the Seventh New York Regiment and went to the front. On February 26, 1862 he was severely wounded in a skirmish, and in April he died. Nearly twenty years later, his friend William Winter edited “The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O’Brien” (1881).

=The Civil War.=--It is not surprising that the Civil War partially, at least, dried up the springs of literature and art in America. It was an epoch of concentration, of action; men had little time for reading novels or writing them; the newspaper any day might chronicle as sublimely heroic or as pathetic events as could be found in fiction. Comparatively few novels of distinction were written, therefore, during the war and the two or three years following it, the Reconstruction period. Some worthy novels which appeared in those years, for example Mrs. Stoddard’s “Morgesons,” failed of an appreciative audience.

The close of the war marked the beginning of a new era in American fiction. As Mr. Morse points out, people no longer cared for stories about the Indians and about the Revolution. The Indians had retreated into that world of romance with which the modern world, ignorant of “Nick of the Woods,” associates them; the Revolution was ancient history by the side of the more terrible conflict just ended, and a quarter of a century must elapse before the earlier war would make a background for fiction. Romance, which, as we have seen, had already begun to lose favour, must now yield to realism; there must be pictures of life at home, in the market-place, in the fields, in the teeming cities; there must be greater skill in handling the narrative so as to make it a transcript from daily life. The lover of romance will doubtless deplore this tendency; but it was inevitable, and it has dictated the path of fiction almost to the present day.

_Oliver Wendell Holmes._--The many-sided activity of Dr. Holmes extended to the writing of three novels--“medicated novels” they have been called, but the term does not apply to all equally well. Certainly they all belong to the large and increasing group of “problem novels.” The first, “Elsie Venner: a Romance of Destiny” (1861), published when the author had passed the half-century mark, made its first appearance as “The Professor’s Story” in _The Atlantic Monthly_. The mother of Elsie Venner, a short time before giving birth to her child, was fatally bitten by a _crotalus_ or rattlesnake, and from birth the child is partially endowed with a serpent nature, which enables her to exercise a peculiar influence over those with whom she is brought into contact, especially the sensitive schoolmistress Helen Darley. “The real aim of the story,” says Dr. Holmes himself, “was to test the doctrine of ‘original sin’ and human responsibility for the disordered volition coming under that technical denomination. Was Elsie Venner, poisoned by the venom of a _crotalus_ before she was born, morally responsible for the ‘volitional’ aberrations which, translated into acts, become what is known as sin, and, it may be, what is punished as crime? If, on presentation of the evidence, she becomes by the verdict of the human conscience a proper object of divine pity and not of divine wrath, as a subject of moral poisoning, wherein lies the difference between her position at the bar of judgment, human or divine, and that of the unfortunate victim who received a moral poison from a remote ancestor before he drew his first breath?” It will thus be seen that what the author intended was nothing less than an onslaught upon one of the great fundamental dogmas of orthodox theology. Fifty years ago, this was a bold undertaking indeed. The intensely tragic motive of the novel is relieved by some chapters of pure comedy, in which figure the mean, calculating, money-making Silas Peckham, the vulgar splurging Sprowles, and a varied group of other minor characters. “The Guardian Angel” (1867) forms a natural sequel to “Elsie Venner”; it deals with some of the problems of heredity, attempting “to show the successive evolution of some inherited qualities in the character of Myrtle Hazard,” the heroine. Less tragic than the earlier tale, “The Guardian Angel” is more pleasant to read, and a more artistic creation. An interesting plot is skilfully worked out and the characterisation is subtle and true. In his third novel, “A Mortal Antipathy” (1885), Dr. Holmes at seventy-six plainly showed that he had passed his creative period. He yielded, to a much greater degree than in the other stories, to the rambling propensity which, charming and natural enough in “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” seriously mars the continuity of a novel in which plot-interest is intended to figure. In this the author deals with the influence on a man’s after-life of an antipathy (toward womankind) arising from a severe shock received in early childhood--an antipathy which is happily removed when the hero, helpless on a sick-bed in a burning house, is borne out by a brave and athletic girl. In spite of its “medicated” character, the story is full of delightful gossip, amusing descriptions and characterisation, and thoughtful speculation over miscellaneous matters connected with the healing art. If, as some contend, Dr. Holmes has in these books emphasised the moral issue at the expense of artistic perfection, they still have great value as records of personality. In Mr. Noble’s words, the author “is a man whose temperament makes him intensely interested in human nature, and whose bent of mind gives him a special interest in any development of human nature which, by exhibiting exceptional possibilities or limitations, casts some strange side-light upon its more ordinary and normal conditions.”

_Mrs. Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard._--Mrs. Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard (1823-1902), wife of the poet Richard Henry Stoddard, wrote three novels remarkable in their day, “The Morgesons” (1862), “Two Men” (1865), and “Temple House” (1867), which found few readers in their time and are now almost forgotten, but which evinced careful observation of life and customs, and decided if not eccentric individuality. Republished in 1888 and again in 1901, “The Morgesons” was praised by such judicious critics as Mr. Stedman, Mr. Julian Hawthorne, and Professor Beers (who declared he had read it four times); but it again failed of popular favour; it had become old-fashioned.

_Edmund Kirke._--Under this pen name, James Roberts Gilmore (1822-1903) was for many years a well known writer. In 1857 he retired from business with a competency, and thereafter devoted himself mainly (except 1873-83) to literature. His earlier novels, “Among the Pines” (1862), “My Southern Friends” (1862), “Among the Guerillas” (1863), “Down in Tennessee” (1863), “Adrift in Dixie” (1863), and “On the Border” (1864), were concerned with the Southern life with which he became acquainted in war-time. In later life, he wrote “The Last of the Thorndikes” (1889) and “A Mountain-White Heroine” (1889). His earlier stories were popular and did much to acquaint readers with slavery.

_Thomas Bailey Aldrich._--Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) began his career as a novelist in 1862 with the publication in _The Atlantic Monthly_ (June) of a little romance, “Père Antoine’s Date Palm,” which secured sympathetic recognition from Hawthorne. In the same year, he also published “Out of His Head, a Romance in Prose,” a collection of six short stories; but these remained his sole efforts in fiction until 1869, when he published his largely autobiographical “Story of a Bad Boy.” The hero of this little idyl of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Tom Bailey, who is after all “not a very bad boy,” has become a classic character in the fiction of boyhood. “Marjorie Daw, and Other Stories” (1873) are ingenious tales, in the first of which a surprising hoax is managed with consummate skill. “Prudence Palfrey” (1874) is an old-fashioned novel of incident in which a well-nigh impossible plot is made plausible. “The Queen of Sheba” (1877) is perhaps the most skilfully done of all his stories; the action takes place in New Hampshire and Switzerland, and the story is full of humour. “The Stillwater Tragedy” (1880) is a realistic portrayal of life in a New England manufacturing village, the _motif_ being the detection of a murderer, and the sombreness of the situation being relieved by a love story. “Two Bites at a Cherry, and Other Tales,” subtle, amusing, ingenious, appeared in 1893. Probably most of us will agree with Mr. Howells when he says that Aldrich was a worker in the novel with the instinct of a romancer, and was at his best in the romantic parts of his stories. Of his prose works his short stories will probably endure longest.

_Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney._--Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney (born in 1824), a native of Boston and sister of the eccentric George Francis Train, wrote a number of stories for young people, beginning with “Boys at Chequasset” (1862) and “Faith Gartney’s Girlhood” (1863) and including also “The Gayworthys” (1865), which ranks among the best of New England novels, “A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life” (1866), “Patience Strong’s Outings” (1868), “Hitherto” (1869), “We Girls” (1870), “Bonnyborough” (1885), and “Ascutney Street” (1888). To some critics the didactic tone of her stories has seemed so prominent as to impair their artistic value; others, like Mrs. Stowe, defend her from the charge of being “preachy.” A vein of mysticism runs through her stories. Her style is effective and her creations are real and lifelike.

_Bayard Taylor._--The writing of novels did not play a great part in the life of Bayard Taylor, who felt himself to be first of all a poet; but his four novels are not without interest. Taylor had already tried his hand at writing stories for _The Atlantic Monthly_ when he began in 1861 the writing of a novel. Before he left America for Russia he had written seven chapters. He finished the book in St. Petersburg and published it in 1863 under the title of “Hannah Thurston, a Story of American Life.” Although the scene is nominally laid in central New York, the life is essentially that of Chester County, Pennsylvania. The plot is similar to that of Tennyson’s “Princess.” It is, however, of secondary importance; the author’s main purpose apparently was to satirise the more or less superficial reforms of the time--abolition, total abstinence, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and the like. The homely and commonplace village life of his time Taylor described vividly and truthfully; but it cannot be said that his characters, amusing as many of them are, are distinctly individualised. Even so, the book was received with favour. It was promptly translated into German, Swedish, and Russian. Its success encouraged Taylor to further efforts. “John Godfrey’s Fortunes, Related by Himself” appeared late in 1864. This is a story of life in Pennsylvania and in New York City. A good plot is worked out, and some of the characters are interesting, though for the most part they are too obviously good or bad. John Godfrey in a sense was Taylor himself, but the book can hardly be called an autobiography. In 1866 appeared “The Story of Kennett,” in some respects the best of Taylor’s novels. For it he drew largely upon his memories of Chester County, and most of the characters were drawn from life. The scene at the funeral of Abiah Barton, where the hero discovers his worthless and cowardly father, has been sharply censured; but Taylor contended that, because of the vein of superstition in Mary Potter, it was the most justifiable chapter in the book. “Joseph and His Friend: a Story of Pennsylvania,” the last of Taylor’s novels, appeared serially in _The Atlantic_, and was published in book form in 1870. It is a disagreeable story of duplicity, in Bismarck’s view of which many have shared, that the villain gets off too easily. To the above should be added a volume of shorter stories issued under the title of “Beauty and the Beast.” In general, Taylor’s novels exhibit skilful workmanship and sympathetic and often vivid delineations of character.

_Louisa May Alcott._--Louisa May Alcott (1832-88), daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, became well known as a writer of wholesome fiction, especially for young readers. She began life as a teacher and during the Civil War was an army nurse. “Moods” (1864), her first novel, was widely read, and contains passages of strength. “Little Women” (1868-69), written as a girls’ book, remains her best. A kind of sequel to it was “Little Men; Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys” (1871), followed in its turn by “Jo’s Boys and How They Turned Out” (1886). Other similar stories were “An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1870), “Work, a Story of Experience” (1873), partly autobiographical, “Eight Cousins” (1875) and its sequel, “Rose in Bloom” (1876), and “A Modern Mephistopheles” (1877), a disagreeable but vigorous and imaginative study of moral deterioration. Her stories continue to be popular with the young, though the newer juvenile fiction will in time supersede them.

_Richard Malcolm Johnston._--Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822-98) was one of the most popular of the Southern writers of his time. The son of a Georgia planter and Baptist clergyman, he in time became a Roman Catholic. Graduating from Mercer University, Georgia, in 1841, he practised law for some years, in 1857 declining a judgeship to become professor of belles-lettres in the University of Georgia. From 1861 till 1882, he was engaged in conducting a boys’ boarding-school, first at Sparta, Georgia, then near Baltimore. In 1864 he published, as “Georgia Sketches,” four stories of life in Georgia. To these, others were added in 1874 under the title of “Dukesborough Tales,” his best book. He afterward wrote “Old Mark Langston” (1884), “Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk” (1888), “Ogeechee Cross-Firings” (1889), “The Primes and Their Neighbours” (1891), “Mr. Billy Downs and His Likes” (1892), “Mr. Fortner’s Marital Claims, and Other Stories” (1892), “Widow Guthrie” (1893), “Little Ike Templin, and Other Stories” (1894), “Old Times in Middle Georgia” (1897), and “Pearce Amerson’s Will” (1898). In all he published more than eighty stories. He was not a master of plot, and the structure of his tales is loose and faulty in sequence; but his characters have the magic touch of reality, and his descriptions of ante-bellum Georgia days cannot be neglected.

_William Mumford Baker._--William Mumford Baker (1825-83), a Princeton graduate and Presbyterian clergyman, was once popular but is now little read. From 1850 till 1865 he was minister of a church in Austin, Texas, where he had many of the experiences utilised in his stories. His most important fiction was “Inside, a Chronicle of Secession,” which was written secretly during the war, ran as a serial in _Harper’s Weekly_, and appeared in book form in 1866; it gives a vivid picture of Southern life and feeling. Some of his later books were “Oak Mot” (1868), “The New Timothy” (1870), “Mose Evans” (1874), “Carter Quarterman” (1876), “A Year Worth Living” (1878), “Colonel Dunwoodie” (1878), “His Majesty Myself” (1879), and “Blessed Saint Certainty” (1881). While not striking their roots very deeply into life and character, his books are marked by sincerity and intense earnestness.

_S. Weir Mitchell._--Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (born in 1830) is a distinguished physician of many-sided fame. A native of Virginia, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Jefferson Medical College, from which he was graduated in 1850. He began writing fiction during the Civil War, and in July, 1866, contributed to _The Atlantic_ a remarkable story, “The Case of George Dedlow.” But it was not until about 1880 that he began to devote himself more seriously to literature. He has written “Hephzibah Guinness” (1880), three stories of Quaker life in Philadelphia; “In War Time” (1885); “Roland Blake” (1886), the earlier part of which deals with the Civil War; “Far in the Forest” (1889), a story of character influence, the scene of which takes place in the forest of Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War; “Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker” (1897), a story of Philadelphia during the War of Independence, which ranks among the few great American novels; “The Adventures of François” (1898), a romance of the French Revolution, the hero being a light-hearted little waif who has some strange adventures; “The Autobiography of a Quack” (1900), a study of the mind of a professional medical knave; “Constance Trescot” (1905), a study of an unusual character, skilfully handled, the scene being Paris in the sixties; and “A Diplomatic Adventure” (1906). Dr. Mitchell’s interest in problems of abnormal psychology has led him to treat some themes which in the hands of any but a born story-teller would have resulted in merely sensational novels. His stories all show keen powers of analysis and character-drawing and a kindly and wholesome optimism.

_Beecher and Higginson._--Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87), amid the many activities of a busy clerical and journalistic life, found time to write one novel, “Norwood, or Village Life in New England” (1867), in which occur descriptive and narrative passages rich in insight and humour. There is only a slight plot; the movement is leisurely; we are chiefly interested in the characters, who include the usual personages to be found in a village and some curious and amusing people as well. The book is partly autobiographical, with a vein of romance running through it. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born in 1823) is chiefly known as an essayist, but wrote one capital story, “Malbone, an Oldport Romance” (1869), which deserves wider reading as a subtle study of temperament; the scene is obviously Newport, Rhode Island. It “is largely a transcript from actual life, the chief character being drawn from the same friend of Higginson, William Hurlbert, who figures as Densdreth in Winthrop’s ‘Cecil Dreeme.’”[15] In “Madame Delia’s Expectations” (_The Atlantic_, January, 1871, reprinted in “Oldport Days,” 1873), Colonel Higginson showed that he could tell a short story well.

_Mark Twain._--The literary productions of Mr. Clemens will be recorded elsewhere; here a few words may be said of his place as a writer of fiction. In technique, it cannot be maintained that he stands high; his narrative wanders whither it listeth, blameless of compact construction or climax; his style is not free from faults. Yet in spite of these defects his name has become “a household word in all places where the English language is spoken, and in many where it is not.” He has created two characters--Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn--who will live long as humorously conceived but true American boys. Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Connecticut Yankee may fade into oblivion, but it seems unlikely that the heroes of Mark Twain’s most typical books will soon be allowed to withdraw from our group of favourites. Moreover, Mr. Clemens has enshrined the Mississippi River of his youth in a kind of homely, virile prose-poetry; he has recorded, in narrative which Mr. Thompson rightly calls “firm and vigorous,” the impression which the great river made upon his youthful mind. Nowhere else shall we find such descriptions of Mississippi River life in the fifties. Artistically defective his work is indeed; but to it cannot be denied the qualities of eloquence, naturalness, and sincerity. The work, like the man, is genuine.

_Bret Harte._--The stirring, primitive, lawless life of early California found its painter in Francis Bret Harte, who early dropped his first name from his literary signature. He was a native of Albany, New York (1839), his ancestors being English, German, and Hebrew. His father, a teacher of Greek, died when the son was but a child. Receiving only a common-school education, Harte went with his family in 1854 to California, which for five years had been the Mecca of the gold-hunter and the gambler. At first he tried teaching and mining, gaining from either business little more than experience, of which he was to make good use in later years. In 1857 he became a compositor for the San Francisco _Golden Era_. Some of his unsigned sketches attracted the notice of the editor, who ordered him to exchange his composing-stick for a writer’s desk in the office. He later joined the staff of _The Californian_, to which he contributed the clever parodies on contemporary writers of fiction later published (1867) as “Condensed Novels.” From 1864 till 1870, he was secretary of the United States Branch Mint; during this time he wrote much of his best poetry. When _The Overland Monthly_ was projected in 1868, no other name than Harte’s was considered for the editorship. Mr. Noah Brooks has told how he and Harte agreed to write each a short story for the first number, and how Harte with his usual fastidiousness about words was unable to finish his in time. When it did appear, however, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and the story which followed it, “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” made Harte famous; the latter story is generally considered the most perfect of his works. In 1870, Mr. Harte was appointed professor of recent literature in the University of California; but in the following year he resigned this post, settled in New York, and devoted himself to lecturing and to writing, especially for _The Atlantic Monthly_. In 1878, he was appointed United States consul at Crefeld, Germany; from 1880 till 1885 he held a similar post at Glasgow. From 1885 until his death, in 1902, Harte lived in London, busily engaged in literary work. His best-known works are “Mrs. Skagg’s Husbands” (1872), “Tales of the Argonauts, and Other Stories” (1875), “Gabriel Conroy,” his only long novel (1876), “Drift from Two Shores” (1878), “The Twins of Table Mountain” (1879), “Flip; and Found at Blazing Star” (1882), “In the Carquinez Woods” (1883), effectively expressing the wonder and mystery of the forest, “On the Frontier” (1884), “Maruja” (1885), a melodramatic novel, “Snow-Bound at Eagle’s” (1886), “A Millionaire of Rough and Ready” (1887), “The Crusade of the Excelsior” (1887), “A Phyllis of the Sierras” (1888), “The Argonauts of North Liberty” (1888), “A Sappho of Green Springs” (1891), “Colonel Starbottle’s Client and Some Other People” (1892), “Sally Dows” (1893), “A Protégée of Jack Hamlin’s” (1894), “The Three Partners” (1897), “Under the Redwoods” (1901). Throughout his life, it will be seen, he continued to write of the old California days, of a régime which has long since passed away, but which he immortalised.

It was Harte’s rare privilege to be the first to work in a mine which has yielded rich ores to many since his day; to write of an elemental, half-savage life in which convention was all but unknown, and the background of which was the rugged simplicity and majesty of the Sierras. “His actual discovery,” says Mr. Logan, “was Nature in an aspect always grand, sometimes awful, at a moment when her primeval solitude was invaded by a host that had cast human relationships behind, and came surging towards an unknown land, all under the sway of a devouring passion--the thirst for gold.” He had his own way (possibly influenced by Dickens) of presenting these rough scenes. He did not idealise this primitive life; he did not as a rule weave it into romance (even Mr. Boyesen cites only “Gabriel Conroy” as a romantic novel); he did not seek to interpret it or to make it symbolise religious or moral ideas. To him it was a very real world; and with true eye and sure touch he sought to portray it impartially, as it was; the reader might draw his own moral--if he happened to need one. It is this unerring instinct of the artist that places Harte in the ranks of the greater story-tellers.

His powers, however, had their limitations. He found himself unable to sustain interest in a long story. “Gabriel Conroy,” though it contains interesting scenes and some of his best characters, is quite without unity--a bundle of impressions in which the same characters are presented hardly twice alike. He has been criticised, too, for endowing otherwise worthless characters with some marked virtue; but perhaps it is only fair to say, with Mr. Logan, that “the virtue is generally a primitive one, and is rarely either inconsistent or improbable.”

In his later years, Harte did little to increase his reputation. The same characters, the same types, appear again and again; but there is no added source of interest, no maturer observation of men and manners. His reputation continues to rest on the score of early tales, terse and full of energy, with which he dazzled and delighted the reading public of the later sixties and the seventies.

_Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward._--It is of course a far cry from Harte to Mrs. Phelps Ward, who came into notice in the East in the same year in which _The Overland_ was started. Mrs. Ward was born at Andover, Massachusetts, and was the daughter of Professor Austin Phelps of Andover Theological Seminary. In 1888 she was married to the Rev. Herbert D. Ward. She is the author of a long list of kindly and readable stories, none of which quite attains to distinction in point of quality, but several of which have been popular and influential. Beginning with “The Gates Ajar” (1868), half novel, half threnody, she continued with “The Silent Partner” (1870), “The Story of Avis” (1877), a favourite with many, “An Old Maid’s Paradise” (1879) and its sequel “Burglars in Paradise” (1886), “Friends, a Duet” (1881), “Doctor Zay” (1882), “Beyond the Gates” (1883), which elaborates the idea of her first story, “A Singular Life” (1894), her best book, and “The Man in the Case” (1906). Her plots, sometimes conventional, are never complicated and are skilfully managed; and her women characters are generally true to life. Of her men, for example Emanuel Bayard, so much cannot be said. She collaborated with her husband in writing two or three novels which were not very successful.