Chapter X: Foreword (9)

“He actually followed Herbert to the front door to
supplicate—Herbert declares, ‘with tears in both
eyes’—that he would at least tell him if his information
was ‘authentic, or if it might not be that he was trying
to scare him?’ Herbert excused himself upon the plea of
pressing business, but invited him to ‘drop into the office
some time if he would have further particulars.’

“Our plot works to a charm. The reverend swain sets out
‘this very week’ for Powhatan, and ‘means to have the matter
settled.’ So, look out for him!

“All this rigmarole is strictly true. No boy of seventeen
was ever more angrily jealous or desperate. You may, if
you like, let the Montrosians into the fun, but, until the
matter is settled, don’t let the key pass into other hands.

“Isn’t it glorious? Two bald heads ducking and ogling to
one fortunate damsel—their bleared eyes looking ‘pistols
for two, coffee for one!’ at each other? What an entrancing
interruption to the monotony of a life that, until now, has
flowed as gently as a canal stream over a grade of a foot to
a mile?”

I remark, _en passant_, what will probably interest not a living creature of this generation—to wit, that neither of the competitors won the amiable woman they made ridiculous by their wintry wooing. She returned a kindly negative to both bachelor and widower, and died, as she had lived, the beloved maiden “Auntie” of numerous nieces and nephews.

Before transcribing other passages from the same letter—one of unusual length even for that epistolary age—I must retrace my steps to pick up the first thread of what was in time to thicken into a “cord of stronger twine.”

When I was sixteen I began to write a book. It was a school-girl’s story—a picture crudely done, but as truthful as I could make it—of what was going on in the small world I thought large, and every personage who figured in it was a portrait. In that book I lived and moved, and had my inmost being for that year. I spoke to nobody of what I was doing. The shrinking from confiding to my nearest and dearest what I was writing, was reluctance unfeigned and unconquerable in the case of this, my best-beloved brain-child. None of my own household questioned me as to what went on in the hours spent in my “study,” as the corner, or closet, or room where I planted myself and desk, was named. We had a way of respecting one another’s eccentricities that had no insignificant share in maintaining the harmony which earned for ours the reputation of a singularly happy family.

I was allowed to plan my day’s work, so long as it did not impinge upon the rights or convenience of the rest. Directly after breakfast, I called my two willing little pupil-sisters to their lessons. The rock and shoals of threatened financial disaster that menaced our home for a while, were safely overpast by now. We were once more in smooth water, and sacrifices might be remitted. I continued to teach my little maids for sheer love of them, and of seeing their minds grow. Both were bright and docile. Alice had an intellect of uncommon strength and of a remarkably original cast. It was a delight to instruct her for some years. After that, we studied together.

Our “school-time” lasted from nine until one. I never emerged from the study until three—the universal dinner-hour in Richmond. If visitors called, as often happened, my mother and sister excused me. In the afternoon we went out together, making calls, or walking, or driving. In the evening there was usually company, or we practised with piano and flute, and, as Herbert grew old enough to join our “band,” he brought in his guitar, or we met in “the chamber,” and one read aloud in the sweet old way while the others wrought with needle and pencil and drawing-board. This was the routine varied by occasional concerts and parties. Now and then, I got away from the group and wrote until midnight.

In 1853 the _Southern Era_, a semi-literary weekly owned and run by the then powerful and popular “Sons of Temperance,” offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best temperance serial of a given length. I had written at sixteen, and recast it at eighteen, a story entitled “Marrying Through Prudential Motives,” and sent it secretly to _Godey’s Magazine_. It bore the signature of “Mary Vale”—a veiled suggestion of my real name. For four years I heard nothing of the waif. I had had experiences enough of the same kind to dishearten a vain or a timorous writer. It was balm to my mortified soul to reflect that nobody was the wiser for the ventures and the failures.

So I set my pen in rest, and went in for the prize; less, I avow, for the fifty dollars than for the reward for seeing my ambitious bantling in print. So faint and few were my expectations of this consummation, that I went off to Boston for the summer, without intimating to any one the audacious cast I had made. I had been with my cousins six weeks when my mother sent me a copy of the _Southern Era_, containing what she said in a letter by the same mail, “promised to be the best serial it had published.” I opened the letter first, and tore the wrapper from the paper carelessly.

How it leaped at me from the outermost page!

OUR PRIZE STORY!
KATE HARPER
By Marion Harland

All set up in what we christened in the last quarter-century, “scare-heads.”

As I learned later from home-letters, the editor, after advertising vainly for the author’s address, had published without waiting for it. I wrote home that night to my father, pouring out the whole revelation, and stipulating that the secret should be kept among ourselves.

“Marion Harland” was, again, a hint of my name, so covert that it was not guessed at by readers in general. The editor, an acquaintance of my father, was informed of my right to draw the money. I continued to send tales and poems to him for two years, and preserved my incognito.

In the late spring of 1853, “Mea,” Herbert, and I were sitting in the parlor on a wild night when it rained as rain falls nowhere else as in the seven-hilled city. My companions had their magazines. Mea’s, as I well recollect, was _Harper’s New Monthly_; my brother had the _Southern Literary Messenger_. Ned Rhodes had taken _Harper’s_ for me from the very first issue. My father subscribed conscientiously for the _Messenger_ to encourage Southern literature. All right-minded Virginians acknowledged the duty of extending such encouragement to the extent of the subscription price of “native productions.”

I had dragged out the rough copy of my book from the bottom of my desk that day, and was now looking it over at a table on one side of the fireplace. Chancing upon the page describing Celestia Pratt’s entrance upon school-life, I laughed aloud.

“What is it?” queried my sister, looking up in surprise.

“See if you know her,” I responded, and read out the scene. She joined in the laugh.

“To the life!” she pronounced. “Go on!”

I finished the chapter, and the two resumed their magazines. Presently Herbert tossed his aside.

“I say!” with boyish impetuosity. “This is stupid after what you gave us. Haven’t you ‘anything more of the same sort?’”

It was a slang phrase of the day.

It was the “Open Sesame” of my literary life.

They kept me reading until nearly midnight, dipping in here for a scene, there for a character-sketch, until my voice gave out.

I began rewriting _Alone_ next day, and we welcomed stormy evenings for the next two months. When the MS. was ready for the press, I wrote the “Dedication to my Brother and Sister” as a pleasant surprise to my generous critics. They did not suspect it until they read it in print.

Getting the work into print was not so easy as the eager praises of my small audience might have inclined me to expect. The principal book-store in Richmond at that time was owned by Adolphus Morris, a warm personal friend of my father. The two had been intimate for years, and the families of the friends maintained most cordial relations. Yet it was with sore and palpable quakings of heart that I betook myself to the office of the man who took on dignity as a prospective publisher, and laid bare my project. It was positive _pain_ to tell him that I had been writing under divers signatures for the press since I was fourteen. The task grew harder as the judicial look, I have learned to know since as the publisher’s perfunctory guise, crept over the handsome face. When I owned, with blushes that scorched my hair, to the authorship of the “Robert Remer” series, and of the prize story in the _Era_, he said frankly and coolly that he “had never read either.” He “fancied that he had heard Mrs. Morris speak of the Remer papers. Religious—were they not?”

He liked me, and his pretty wife (who had far more brains and vivacity than he) had made a pet of me. He honored my father, and was under business obligations to him. I was conscious, while I labored away at my share in my first business interview, that he lent kindly heed to me for these reasons, and not that he had the smallest grain of faith in the merits of my work. I was a child in his sight, and he would humor my whim.

“I am willing to submit your manuscript to my reader,” he said, at last.

I looked the blank ignorance I felt. He explained patronizingly. He had patronized me from the moment I said that I had written a book. I have become familiar with this phase of publisherhood, also, since that awful day.

“John R. T. reads all my manuscripts!” fell upon my ear like a trickle of boiling lead. “Send it down when it is ready, and I will put it into his hands. You know, I suppose, that everything intended for printing must be written on one side of the paper?”

I answered meekly that I had heard as much, bade him “Good morning!” and crept homeward, humbled to the dust.

“John R. T.!” (Nobody ever left out the “R.” in speaking of him, and nobody, so far as I ever heard, knew for what it stood.)

He was the bright son of a worthy citizen; had been graduated at the University of Virginia; studied _at_ the law, and entered the editorial profession as manager-in-chief, etc., of the _Southern Literary Messenger_. He had social ambitions, and had succeeded in acquiring a sort of world-weary air, and a gentle languor of tone and bearing which might have been copied from D’Israeli’s _Young Duke_, a book in high favor in aristocratic circles. I never saw “Johnny”—as graceless youths who went to school with him grieved him to the heart by calling him on the street—without thinking of the novel. Like most caricatures, the likeness was unmistakable.

And into the hands of this “reader” I was to commit my “brain-child!” I cried out against the act in such terms as these, and stronger, in relating the substance of the interview to my father.

“Be sensible, little girl! Keep a cool head!” he counselled. “Business is business. And I suppose John R. understands his. I will take the manuscript to Morris myself to-morrow.”

“And make him comprehend,” I interjected, “that I do not shirk criticism. I see the faults of my book. If I were sure that it would be judged fairly, I wouldn’t mind it so much.”

The reader kept the manuscript two months. Then my father wrote a civil demand to Mr. Morris for the return of the work. I was too sick of soul to lift a finger to reclaim what I was persuaded was predestined to be a dead failure. Two days later the bulky parcel came back. Mr. Morris had enclosed with it the reader’s opinion:

“I regret that the young author’s anxiety to regain possession of her bantling has prevented me from reading more than a few pages of the story. Judging from what I have read, however, I should not advise you to publish it upon speculation.”

I laid the note before my father after supper that evening. Our mother had early inculcated in our minds the eminent expediency of never speaking of unpleasant topics to a tired and hungry man. We always waited until bath, food, and rest had had their perfect work upon the head of the house. He leaned back in his arm-chair, the evening paper at his elbow, his slippered feet to the glowing grate, and a good cigar between his lips. His teeth tightened suddenly upon it when he heard the note. It was curt. To my flayed sensibilities, it was brutal. I see, now, that it was businesslike and impersonal. Were I a professional “reader,” I should indite one as brief, and not a whit more sympathetic. _Alone_ was my first book, and a sentient fraction of my soul and heart.

For a whole minute there was no sound in the room but the bubbling song of the soft coal. I sat upon a stool beside my confidant, and, having passed the letter up to him, my head sank gradually to his knee. I was unspeakably miserable, but I made no moan. He had not patience with weak wails when anything remained to be done. His cigar had gone out, for when I lifted my head at his movement toward the lamp, he had folded the scrap of paper into a spile, and was lighting it. He touched the dead cigar with the flame, and drew hard upon it until it was in working order before he said:

“I believe in that book! I shall send it back to Morris, to-morrow, and tell him to bring it out in good style and send the bill to me.”

“But,” I gasped, “you may lose money by it!”

“I don’t think so. At any rate, we will make the experiment.”

XXIV

THE DAWNING OF LITERARY LIFE

“_January 28th, 1854._

“_My very dear Friend_,—I wish you were here this morning!
I long to talk with you. There are many things I cannot
commit to paper, or of which I might be ashamed as soon as
they were written. There are no short-hand and long-tongued
reporters at our face-to-face confabulations.

“Of one thing I will give you a hint: Have you any
recollection of a certain MS., portions of which were read
in your hearing last spring? I should not be surprised if
you were to hear something of it before long. Keep your eyes
upon the papers for a few weeks, and if you see nothing that
looks like a harbinger of the advent, just conclude that
I have changed my mind at the last gasp and recalled it.
_For it has gone out of my hands!_ After the appearance of
anything that looks that way, I unseal your mouth.

“Seriously, I have much pending upon this venture. The
success of the book may be the opening of the path I cannot
but feel that Providence has marked out for me.

“As it is a Virginia story, Southerners should buy it, if it
has no other merit. My misgivings are grave and many; but
my advisers urge me on, and notices of fugitive articles
that have appeared in Northern and Southern papers have
inoculated me with a little confidence in the wisdom of
their counsel.

“I had not meant to say this, or, indeed, to mention the
matter at all, but as the day of publication draws near, I
am, to use an expressive Yankeeism—‘fidgety.’

“If anything I have said savors of undue solicitude for the
bantling’s welfare, recollect that I am the mother. One
thing more: I shall have nothing to do with advertisements.
If they laud the work too highly, bear in mind that it is
‘all in the way of trade,’ and that booksellers will have
their way.

“Our ‘Musical Molasses Stew’ came off last night. We had a
grand ‘time!’ Violin, flute, guitar, piano—all played by
masculine amateurs, and a chorus of men’s voices. It was
‘nae sae bad,’ as the Scotch critic said of Mrs. Siddons’s
acting. The same might be said of the real frolic of pulling
the treacle. My partner was a young Nova Scotian—‘Blackader’
by name—an intelligent, agreeable, and versatile youth
who entered gloriously into the spirit of the occasion.
He played upon the piano, sang treble, tenor, and bass
by turns, and pulled and laughed with me until he had no
strength left.”

I was but feebly convalescent from a brief illness when, chancing to pick up the latest number of _Godey’s Magazine_, and fluttering the leaves aimlessly, my eyes rested upon a paragraph in the “Editor’s Table.”

“Will the author of ‘Marrying Through Prudential Motives’ send her address to the editor?”

A queer story followed. The tale, sent so long ago to Mr. Godey that I had almost forgotten it, had fallen behind a drawer of his desk, and lain there for three years and more. When it finally turned up, curiosity, aroused by its disappearance and exhumation, led the editor to read it more carefully than if it had reached him through ordinary channels. He liked it, published it, and waited to hear from the author.

By some mischance that particular number of the “Lady’s Book” had escaped my notice. The story was copied into an English periodical; translated from this into French, and appeared on the other side of the channel. Another British monthly “took up the wondrous tale” by rendering the French version back into the vernacular. In this guise the much-handled bit of fiction was brought across the seas by _The Albion_, a New York periodical that published only English “stuff.” Mr. Godey arraigned _The Albion_ for piracy, and the truth was revealed by degrees. Richmond papers copied the odd “happening” from Northern, and Mr. Morris made capital of it in advertising the forthcoming novel.

I have more than once spoken of the Richmond of that date as “provincial.” It was so backward in literary enterprise that the leading bookseller had not facilities at his command for publishing the book committed to him.

On March 9, 1854, I wrote to my Powhatan correspondent:

“Cousin Joe says he was charged by you to get ‘my book.’
I am sorry to say that it cannot be procured as yet.
Unlooked for delays have impeded the work of publication.
But, as the proofs arrive daily, now, I trust that the
wheels are beginning to run more smoothly. It is printed
in Philadelphia, although copyrighted in Richmond. Not a
printer in this city could finish it before the 1st of May,
so we were forced to send it to the North....

“You will read and like it, if only because I wrote it.
Whether or not others may cavil at the religious tone, and
ridicule the simplicity of the narrative, remains to be
seen. Thus far I have had encouragement from all sides. My
own fears are the drawback to sanguine expectation.”

The actual advent of _Alone_ was a surprise, after all the waiting and wondering that left the heart sick with hope deferred.

I was setting out for a walk one balmy May morning, and standing on the front porch to draw on my gloves, when Doctor Haxall, who had long had in our family the sobriquet of “the beloved physician,” reined in his horses at the gate and called out that he was “just coming to ask me to drive with him.” He had often done the like good turn to me.

I was not robust, and he had watched my growth with more than professional solicitude. Had he been of my very own kindred, he could not have been kinder or displayed more active interest in all my affairs—great to me and small to him.

“Headache?” he queried, with a keen look at my pale face when I was seated at his side.

“Not exactly! I think the warm weather makes me languid.”

“More likely overexcited nerves. You must learn to take life more philosophically. But we won’t talk shop!”

We were bowling along at a fine rate. The doctor drove fast, blooded horses, and liked to handle the ribbons himself. The day was deliciously fresh, the air sweet with early roses and honeysuckle. I called his attention, in passing Conway Robinson’s grounds, to the perfume of violets rising in almost visible waves from a ravine where the grass was whitened by them as with a light fall of snow. I asked no questions as we turned down Capitol Street, and thence into Main Street. Sometimes I sat in the carriage while he paid a professional call. This might be his intention now. We brought up abruptly at Morris’s book-store, and the blesséd man leaped out and held his hand to me. He probably had an errand there. He handed me into the interior in his brisk way, and marched straight up to Mr. Morris, who advanced to meet us.

“Good-morning! I have come for a copy of this young lady’s book!”

If I had ever fainted, I should have swooned on the spot.

For there, in heaps and heaps upon the front counter—in bindings of dark-blue, and purple, and crimson, and leaf-brown—lay in lordly state, portly volumes, on the backs of which, in gleaming gold that shimmered and shook before my incredulous vision, was stamped:

“ALONE.”

I saw, through the sudden dazzlement of the whole world about me, that a clerk had set a chair for me. I sat down gratefully.

Mr. Morris was talking:

“Opened this morning! I sent six copies up to you. I suppose you got them?”

“No!” I tried so hard to say it firmly that it sounded careless. I would have added, “I did not know it was out,” but dared not attempt a sentence.

Mr. Morris attended us to the door to point to placards a porter was tacking to boards put there for that express purpose:

JUST OUT!!
ALONE!
By Marion Harland

The doctor nodded satisfiedly and handed me into the carriage. In taking my seat, I thought, in a dull, sick way, of Bruce at the source of the Nile. I had had day-dreams of this day and hour a thousand times in the last ten years. Of how I should walk down-town some day, and see a placard at this very door bearing the title of a novel written and bound, and lettered in gilt, and PUBLISHED! bearing my pen-name! The vision was a reality; the dream was a triumphant fulfilment. And I was sitting, unchanged, and non-appreciative, by the dear old doctor, and his full, cordial tones were saying of the portly purple volume lying on the seat between us:

“Well, my dear child, I congratulate you, and I hope a second edition will be called for within six months!”

He did not ply me with questions. He may not have suspected that the shock had numbed my ideas and stiffened my tongue. If he had, he could not have borne himself more tactfully. He was a man who had seen the world and hobnobbed with really distinguished live authors. It would not have been possible for him to enter fully into what this day was to me. When I thought of Bruce and the Nile, it was because I did not comprehend that the very magnitude of the crisis was what deprived me of the power of appreciating what had happened.

No! I am not inclined to ridicule the unsophisticated girl whose emotions were too mighty for speech that May noon, and to minimize what excited them. Nothing that wealth or fame could ever offer me in years to come could stir the depths of heart and mind as they were upheaved in that supreme hour.

The parcel of books had been opened and the contents examined, by the time I got home. I stole past the open door of my mother’s chamber, where she and Aunt Rice, who was visiting us, and Mea were chatting vivaciously, and betook myself to my room.

When my sister looked me up at dinner-time I told her to excuse me from coming down. “The heat had made me giddy and headachy.”

She bade me “lie still. She would send me a cup of tea.”

“I’ll leave you this for company,” she cooed, laying the book tenderly on my pillow. “_We_ think it beautiful.”

With that she went out softly, shutting me in with my “beautiful” first-born. Mea always had her wits within easy call. The sixth sense was born within her.

I saw of the travail of my soul and was satisfied; was repaid a thousandfold for months of toil and years of waiting, when my father read my book. He did not go down-town again that day, after coming home to dinner. My mother told me, with a happy break in her laugh, how he had hardly touched the food on his plate. Aunt Rice’s pleasant prattle saved the situation from awkwardness when he lapsed into a brown study and talked less than he ate. When dessert was brought in, he excused himself and disappeared from general view for the rest of the afternoon. The door of “the chamber” to which he withdrew was fast shut. Nobody disturbed him until it was too dark to read by daylight. My mother took in a lighted lamp and set it on the table by him.

“He didn’t see or hear me!” was her report. “He is a quarter through the book already, and he doesn’t skip a word.”

He spent just fifteen minutes at the supper-table. It was two o’clock in the morning before he reached the last page.

After prayers next morning he put his arm about me and held me fast for a moment. Then he kissed me very gravely.

“I was right about that book, daughter!”

That was all! but it was, to my speechless self, as if the morning stars had sung together for joy.

I record here and now what I did not know in the spring-tide of my happiness. I never had—I shall never have—another reader like him. As long as he lived, he “believed” in me and in my work with a sincerity and fervor as impossible for me to describe as it can be for any outsider to believe. He made the perusal of each volume (and they numbered a score before he died) as solemn a ceremony as he instituted for the first. His absolute absorption in it was the secret jest of the family, but they respected it at heart. When he talked with me of the characters that bore part in my stories, he treated them as real flesh-and-blood entities. He found fault with one, and sympathized with another, and argued with a third, as seeing them in _propia personæ_. It was strange—phenomenal—when one considers the light weight of the literature under advisement and the mental calibre of the man. To me it was at once inspiration and my exceeding great reward.

“_June 5th, 1854._

“DEAR EFFIE,—From a formidable pile of letters of good
wishes and congratulation, I select (not _happen_ upon!)
your sweet, affectionate epistle, every word of which, if it
did not come from your heart, went straight to mine.

“I shall never be a literary iceberg! That is clear. I have
had a surfeit of compliments in public and in private, but
a word of appreciation from a true, loving friend gives me
more delicious pleasure than all else.

“I make no excuse for speaking freely to you of what you
say is ‘near akin’ to you. I thank you heartily for owning
the relationship. Two editions have been ‘run off’ already,
and another is now in press—unprecedented success in this
part of the world—or so they tell me. Northern papers notice
the book more at length and more handsomely than does the
Richmond press.

“Of the sales in your county, I know nothing. Oh yes! C. W.
told Mr. Rhodes that ‘Miss Virginia Hawes’s novel is having
a tremendous run in Powhatan. Tre-_men_-dous, sir! Why, I
had an order to buy a copy and send it up, myself, sir!’

“Isn’t that characteristic?”

XXV

BROUGHT FACE TO FACE WITH MY FATE

THE promised visit to Powhatan was paid in July.

“How happily the days of Thalaba went by!”

I said over the strangely musical line to myself scores of times in the two months of my stay in the dear old county. “Homestead,” the home of the D.’s, was never more beautiful, and the days were full of innocent fun, and junketings without number. College and University boys were at home, and city people were flocking to the country. There were walks, drives, “dining-days,” early and late horseback parties, setting out from one hospitable house before sunrise, and breakfasting at another ten or twelve miles away; or, better yet, leaving home at sunset, and pacing, cantering, and galloping (women never rode trotting horses) along highroad and plantation lane to a house, buried in ancestral woods, in the very heart of the county, for supper, returning by the light of the harvest moon, as fresh as when we set forth. With no premonition that this was to be the most eventful summer and autumn of my hitherto tranquil life, I gave myself up, wholly and happily, to the influences that sweetened and glorified it.

Late in August I resolved rather suddenly to go home. My sister was in Boston; my father would not leave his business for so much as a week; my mother and the younger children ought to be in the country. Since she would not resign my father to what she spoke of as “Fate and servants,” I would throw my now rejuvenated body into the breach, abide by the stuff and her husband and sons, while she took a sadly needed rest with old friends in Nottoway County.

Recollecting how persistently I clung to the decision in the face of a tempest of protest, my own heart in secret league with the protestants, I acknowledge with humble gratitude the guidance of the “moving finger that writes” out the destinies we think to control for ourselves.

The glow of the halcyon summer had not passed from my spirit when I wrote to my late hostess two days after my return:

“RICHMOND, _August 29th, 1854._

“MY OWN FRIEND,—I said ‘I will write next week,’ but it
suits my feelings and convenience to write this morning.

“In the first place, my heart is so full of happiness
that it overflows upon and toward everybody that I love,
and don’t you dear Homesteadians—yourself and Powhie,
especially—come in for a share?

“Mrs. Noble was very pleasant, but the journey was a bit
tedious. It always is! Richmond looked enchanting when at
last the spires and chimneys appeared upon the horizon, and
my sweet home was never so pretty before.

“Mother had planned an agreeable surprise, and not told
me that the painters had been at work elsewhere than in
my room. So the freshly painted shutters and the white
window-facings and cornices, contrasted with the gray
walls, were doubly beautiful, because not expected. Then
Percy came tumbling down the steps, clapping his hands and
shouting in glee, and Alice’s bright smile shone upon me at
the gate, and mother left company in the parlor to give me
four kisses—and all I could say was, ‘I have had _such_ a
pleasant visit, and now I am _so_ glad to see you all!’

“Father could not be coaxed to bed that night until one
o’clock, although mother reminded him that he had a headache.

“‘Never mind! Daughters don’t come home every night!’

“‘But this one will be tired out!’

“‘Well, she may sleep late to-morrow morning.’

“He doesn’t know how lazy I have grown of late.

“I am surprised to find vegetation so luxuriant here. My
inquiries concerning the ‘late drought’ are answered by a
stare of amazement. Rain has been abundant in this region.
In our garden the vegetables and grape-vines grow rank and
tall. And as for flowers! There were seven bouquets in
the parlor, smiling and breathing a welcome. Last night I
received one per rail from Horace Lacy (bless his soul!),
and Herbert to-night brought up another and a magnificent,
when he came to his late supper.

“Mother had delicious peaches for supper the night I got
back, but advised me to ‘eat them sparingly, at first.’
Yesterday I forgot her caution, and I think I am the better
for the lapse. Peaches, watermelons, apples, sweet potatoes,
etc., were liberally patronized by us all. The cholera
‘scare’ seems to be over. Doctor Haxall advised the members
of our family to make no change in their diet while they
continued well, and they have prospered wonderfully under
his regimen....

“I wish I had time to tell you of some queer letters I found
waiting for me. Father would not forward them, ‘for fear
of annoying me.’ They are meant to be complimentary, one
requesting ‘some particulars of your birthplace, education,’
etc. ‘Wish he may get them!’

“Now, dear, forgive this egotistical scrawl—written as fast
as fingers can scratch—but just seat yourself and tell me
exactly what you have been doing, saying, and thinking
since I left; how our pet, Powhie (the dear old scamp!), is
thriving; and the state of your mother’s health, also the
news from The Jungle.

“Our Heavenly Father bless and love you, my darling!”

We packed my mother and her younger children off to the country the first of September, and rejoiced unselfishly that they had escaped the fervid heats of the following week. Our house was deliciously cool by comparison with the sultriness of the outer world. The thick walls and lofty ceilings kept the temperature at an equable and comfortable point. We breakfasted early, and by nine o’clock the day was my own—or six consecutive hours of it.

In unconscious imitation of Charlotte Brontë, who began _Jane Eyre_ while _The Professor_ was “plodding his weary round from publisher to publisher,” I had begun another book by the time _Alone_ was turned over to the tender mercies of Mr. Morris’s “reader.” I finished the first draught on the forenoon of September 11th, having wrought at it with the fierce joy in work that ever comes to me after a season of absolute or comparative idleness.

I was very weary when the last word was written:

“Alma was asleep!”

I read it aloud to myself in the safe solitude of my shaded library. I had not heard then that Thackeray slapped his thigh exultantly after describing the touch of pride Becky felt in her husband’s athletic pummelling of her lover. I could have understood it fully at that instant.

“Thackeray, my boy, that is a stroke of genius!” cried the great author, aloud, in honest pride.

The small woman writer sat wearily back in her chair, and said—not murmured: “I flatter myself _that_ is a neat touch!”

Then I found that my head ached. Moreover, it had a strange, empty feeling. I compared it to a squeezed sponge. I likewise reminded myself that I had not been out of the house for two days; that my father had shaken his head when I told him it was “too hot for walking,” warning me that I “must not throw away the good the country had done for me.” He would ask me, at supper-time, if I had taken the admonition to heart.

I went off to my room, bathed, and dressed for a round of calls. This I proceeded to make, keeping on the shady side of the street. I called at three houses, and found everybody out. The sun was setting when I stood in front of my mirror on my return, and laid aside bonnet and mantle (we called it a “visite”). The red light from the west shot across me while I was brushing up the hair the hot dampness had laid flat. It struck me suddenly that I was looking rather well. I wore what we knew as a “spencer” of thin, dotted white muslin. It would be a “shirt-waist” to-day. It was belted at what was then a slim waist above a skirt of “changeable” silk. Herbert had said it “reminded him of a pale sunrise,” but there were faint green reflections among shimmering pinks. There must be somebody in the immediate neighborhood upon whom I might call while I was dressed to go out. A dart of self-reproach followed swiftly upon the thought.

My old and favorite tutor, Mr. Howison, had broken down in health two years after accepting a call to his first parish. An obstinate affection of the throat made preaching impracticable. At the end of a year of compulsory inaction, he resumed the practice of law in Richmond, and within another twelve months married the woman he had sought and won before his illness. They lived in a pleasant house upon the next street, so near that we often “ran around” to see each other. “Mary’s” younger sister had died during my absence from home, and as I reminded myself, now, I ought to have called before this.

Half a square from her door, I recalled that the young clergyman who was supplying Doctor Hoge’s pulpit while he was abroad, and whom I had heard preach last Sunday, was staying at the Howison’s. It was not right, in the eyes of the church, that he should go to a hotel, and since he would go nowhere except as a boarder, the Howisons had opened door and hearts to make him at home in his temporary charge. He had given us an interesting sermon on Sunday, and made a pleasing impression generally. I had not thought of him since, until almost at the gate of my friends’ house. Then I said, inly:

“Should the youthful divine be hanging about the porch or yard, I’ll walk on unconcernedly and postpone the call.”

Being familiar with the ways of young sprigs of divinity, and having over twenty blood-relatives who had the right to prefix their baptismal names by “The Reverend,” I had no especial fondness for the brand. Furthermore, three callow clerics and one full-fledged had already invited me to share parsonage and poverty with them. For all I had one and the same reply. It might be my predestined lot, as certain anxious friends began to hint, to live out my earthly days in single blessedness; and, if the ancient anti-race-suicide apostles were to be credited, then to lead apes in Hades for an indefinite period. I would risk the terrors of both states sooner than take upon me the duties and liabilities of a minister’s wife. Upon that I was determined.

The youthful divine was nowhere in sight. Nor did he show up during the half-hour I passed with the Howisons. They proposed walking home with me when I arose to go. Just outside the gate we espied a tall figure striding up the street, swinging his cane in very unclerical style. Mr. Howison stopped.

“Ah, Mr. Terhune! I was hoping you might join us.”

Then he introduced him to me. Of course, he asked permission to accompany us, and we four strolled abreast through the twilight of the embowered street. I had known the sister of Mr. Terhune, who, as the widow of Doctor Hoge’s most intimate friend, was a frequent visitor to Richmond. I asked civilly after her, and was answered as civilly. We remarked upon the heat of the day and the fine sunset; then we were at our gate, where my father and brother were looking out for me.

My escorts declined the invitation to enter garden and house; Mr. Howison passed over to me a big bunch of roses he had gathered from his garden and brought with him, and, having exchanged “Good-evenings,” we three lingered at the gate to admire the flowers. There was no finer collection of roses in any private garden in town than those which were the lawyer’s pets and pride. My face was buried in the cool deliciousness of my bouquet when, through the perfect stillness of the evening, we heard our new acquaintance say:

“Your friend, Miss Hawes, walks well.”

He had, as we had noticed on Sunday, a voice of marvellous compass, with peculiar “carrying” qualities. He had not spoken more loudly than his companions, and, having reached the corner of the street, he fancied himself beyond earshot. Every word floated back to us.

We laughed—all three of us. Then I said, deliberately:

“If that man ever asks me to marry him, I shall have to do it! I vowed solemnly, long ago, to marry the first man who thinks me handsome, if he should give me the chance. Let us hope this one won’t!”

“Amen!” responded my hearers, my father adding, “His cloth rules him out.”

It may have been a week later in the season that I was strolling down Broad Street in company with “Tom” Baxter, Mr. Rhodes’s chummiest crony. He had overtaken me a few squares farther up-town, and was begging me, in the naïve way most girls found bewitching, to take a turning that would lead us by an office where he was to leave a paper he had promised to deliver at that hour.

“Then,” he pursued, with the same refreshing simplicity of tone and look, “there will be nothing to hinder me from going all the way home with you.”

I refused point-blank, and he detained me for a minute at the parting of the ways, entreating and arguing, until I cut the nonsense short by saying that _I_ had an engagement which I must keep without regard to _his_ convenience, and walked on. Tom was an amusing fellow, and handsome enough to win forgiveness for his absurdities. I was smiling to myself in the recollection of the little farce, when I met, face to face, but not eye to eye—for we were both looking at the pavement—the man who had said that I walked well. He stepped aside hurriedly; the hand that swung the cane went up to his hat, and we went our separate ways.

That evening I was surprised to receive a call from our pastor _pro tempore_. He told me, months afterward, that he was homesick and lonely on that particular afternoon. At least two-thirds of the best people in the parish were out of town, and he found little to interest him in those he met socially.

“You smiled in such a genial fashion when we met on that blesséd corner that I felt better at once. The recollection of that friendly look gave me courage to call, out of hand.”

Whereupon, I brought sentimentality down on the run by asking if he had ever heard the negro proverb, “Fired at the blackbird and hit the crow”?

“That was Tom Baxter’s smile—not yours!”

XXVI

LITERARY WELL-WISHERS—GEORGE D. PRENTICE—MRS.
SIGOURNEY—GRACE GREENWOOD—H. W. LONGFELLOW—JAMES
REDPATH—“THE WANDERING JEW”

AUTHORS were not so plentiful then as to attract no attention in a crowd of non-literary people. Men and women who had climbed the heights had leisure to glance down at those nearer the foot of the hill, and to send back a cheering hail. I had twenty letters from George D. Prentice, known of all men as the friend and helper of youthful writers. All were kind and encouraging. By-and-by, they were fatherly and familiar. As when I lamented that I had never been able to make my head work without my heart, he responded, “Hearts without heads are too impulsive, sometimes too hot. Heads without hearts are too cold. Suppose you settle the matter by giving the heart into my keeping, in trust for the happy man who will call for it some day?”

His letters during the war were tinged with sadness. In one he wrote: “My whole heart is one throbbing prayer to the God of Nations that He will have mercy upon my beloved country.”

In reply to a letter of sympathy after the death of a gallant young son, who fell on the battle-field, he said:

“My dear boy never gave me a pang except by entering the
army (in obedience to what he felt was the call of duty),
and in dying. A nobler, more dutiful son never gladdened a
father’s heart.”

Our correspondence was continued as long as the poet-editor lived. I owe him much. I wish I had made him comprehend how much.

Mrs. Sigourney, then on “the retired list” of American authors, sent me a copy of her latest volume of poems—_A Western Home_—and three or four letters of motherly counsel, one of which advised me to take certain epochs of American history as foundation-stones for any novels I might write in future, and bidding me “God-speed!”

Grace Greenwood opened a correspondence with the younger woman who had admired her afar off, and we kept up the friendship until she went abroad to live, resuming our intercourse upon her return to New York in the early eighties.

From Mr. Longfellow I had two letters. One told me that Mrs. Longfellow was “reading _Alone_ in her turn.”

“I am pleased to note upon the title-page of my copy,
‘_Sixth Edition_.’ That looks very like a guide-board
pointing to Fame. I should think you would feel as does the
traveller in the Tyrol who sees, at a turn in the rocky
pass, a finger-post with the inscription—‘TO ROME.’ Hoping
that you will not be molested by the bandits who sometimes
infest that route, I am sincerely yours,

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.”

I have carried the letter, word for word, in my heart for more than half a century. A patent of nobility would not have brought me keener and more exquisite pleasure.

Not that I deceived myself, for one mad hour, with the fancy that I could ever gain the right to stand for one beatific moment on a level with the immortals whom I worshipped. In the first flush of my petty triumph, I felt my limitations. The appreciation of these has grown upon me with each succeeding year. “Fred” Cozzens, the “Sparrowgrass” of humorous literature, said to me once when I expressed something of this conviction:

“Yet you occupy an important niche.”

I replied in all sincerity: “I know my place. But the niche is small, and it is not high up. All that I can hope is to fill it worthily, such as it is.”

The history of one bulky packet of letters takes me back to the orderly progress of my story, and to the most singular and romantic episode of that first year of confessedly literary life.

_Alone_ had been out in the world about three months, when I received a letter from a stranger, postmarked “Baltimore,” and bearing the letter-head of a daily paper published in that city. The signature was “James Redpath.” The writer related briefly that, chancing to go into Morris’s book-store while on a visit to Richmond, he had had from the publisher a copy of my book, and read it. He went on to say:

“It is full of faults, as you will discover for yourself
in time. Personally, I may remark, that I detest both your
politics and your theology. All the same, you will make
your mark upon the age. In the full persuasion of this, I
write to pledge myself to do all in my power to forward your
literary interests. I am not on the staff of the Baltimore
paper, although now visiting the editor-in-chief. But I have
influence in more than one quarter, and you will hear from
me again.”

I laid the queer epistle before my father, and we agreed that my outspoken critic was slightly demented. I was already used to odd communications from odd people, some from anonymous admirers, some from reviewers, professional and amateur, who sought to “do me good,” after the disinterested style of the guild.

I was therefore unprepared for the strenuous manner in which Mr. James Redpath proceeded to keep his pledge. Not a week passed in which he did not send me a clipping from some paper, containing a direct or incidental notice of my book, or work, or personality. Now he was in New Orleans, writing fiery Southern editorials, and insinuating into the body of the same, adroit mention of the rising Southern author. Now he slipped into a Cincinnati paper a poem taken from _Alone_, with a line or two, calling attention to the novel and the author; then a fierce attack upon the “detested politics and theology” flamed among book-notices in a Buffalo journal, tempered by regrets that “real talent should be grossly perverted by sectional prejudice and superstition.” Anon, a clever review in a Boston paper pleased my friends in the classic city so much that they sent a marked copy to me, not dreaming that I had already had the critique, with the now familiar “J. R.” scrawled in the margin. The climax of the melodrama was gained during the struggle over “bleeding Kansas” in 1855. A hurried note from the near neighborhood of Leavenworth informed me that a pro-slavery force, double the size of the abolitionist militia gathered to resist it, was advancing upon the position held by the latter. My dauntless knight wrote:

“Farewell, dear and noble lady! If I am not killed in the
fight, you will hear from me again and again. Should I be
translated to another sphere, I shall still (if possible)
rap back notices of your work through the Fox sisters or
other mediums.”

Hearing nothing more of or from him for two months, I was really unhappy in the apprehension that his worst fears had been realized. I had grown to like him, and my gratitude for his disinterested championship was warm and deep. My father expressed his conviction that the eccentric was the Wandering Jew, and predicted his safe deliverance from the pro-slavery hordes, and reappearance in somebody’s editorial columns. His prophecy was fulfilled in a long report in a Philadelphia sheet of a meeting with the “new star of the South,” in the vestibule of the church attended by the aforesaid. Nothing that escaped my lips was set down, but my dress and appearance, my conversational powers and deportment were painted in glowing colors, the veracious portraiture concluding with the intelligence that I would shortly be married to the son of a former Governor of Virginia—“a man, who, despite his youth, has already distinguished himself in the political arena, and we are glad to say, in the Democratic ranks.”

I thought my father would have an apoplectic fit when he got to that!

“See here, my child! I don’t presume to interfere with Salathiel, or by what other name your friend may choose to call himself, and there are all manner of tricks in the trade editorial, but this is going a little too far. He sha’n’t marry you off, without your consent—and to a Democrat!”

I had the same idea, and hearing directly from Mr. Redpath soon afterward, I said as much, as kindly as I could. The remonstrance elicited a gentlemanly rejoinder. While the style of the “report” was “mere newspaper lingo,” he claimed that the framework was built by an _attaché_ of the Philadelphia daily, whom he (Redpath) had commissioned to glean all he could of my appearance, etc., during a flying trip to Richmond. The young fellow had written the article and sent it to press without submitting it to Salathiel. The like should not occur again. In my answer to the apology, I expressed my profound sense of gratitude to my advocate, and confessed my inability to divine the motive power of benefactions so numerous and unsolicited. His reply deepened the mystery:

“Your book held me back from infidelity. Chapter Sixteenth saved my life. Now that you know thus much, we will, if you please, have no more talk on your part of gratitude.”

Five years elapsed between the receipt of that first note signed “James Redpath,” and the explanation of what followed. I may relate here, in a few sentences, what he wrote to me at length, and what was published in an appreciative biographical sketch written by a personal friend after his death.