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REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN STORY TELLERS ELLEN GLASGOW
I. HER TECHNIQUE
WHILE there is not the slightest doubt of Miss Glasgow's title to a place of honour in a series of papers on the leading story-tellers of America, it must at the same time be recognised that this particular aspect of her work, if too rigidly adhered to, is likely to do scant justice to her rather unusual powers. It is, of course, axiomatic that without some sort of a story we cannot make any sort of a novel; and we cannot make a strong, big novel without a rather big, strong story as a foundation. And yet the story alone cannot be used as a measure of bigness, because many other factors enter in to make up the sum total of any novel destined to live. Some novelists, however, choose deliberately to subordinate other interests to that of the narrative they have to tell. Their mastery of technique may be of the best; their philosophy of life sane and earnest and helpful -- yet if they insist upon regarding themselves primarily as entertainers, and their books as little pocket theatres, then they remain of their own choice in the ranks of the story-tellers. Miss Glasgow is one of the small number of American novelists who have chosen to take a higher and finer attitude toward their work. And that is why it is impracticable, even in a series bearing the present title, to discuss her place in modern fiction simply from the stand-point of story-telling.
In glancing back over the twelve or fifteen years during which Miss Glasgow has been practising her careful, deliberate, finely conceived art, and patiently working, not without an occasional blunder, toward her present mastery of technique, one feels that on the whole she has not yet had in full the generous, wide-spread and serious recognition to which she is entitled. Some of her volumes, to be sure, have enjoyed a wide circulation; and in many quarters she has had cordial critical appreciation. And yet, at best, it seems distinctly disproportioned to a talent which, in the opinion of the present writer, stands in the forefront of American women novelists, outranking on the one side Mrs. Atherton, as far as it outranks Mrs. Wharton on the other.
And, in the first place, in order to understand the sound critical grounds for assigning so high a place to the author of The Deliverance, it seems not merely worth while but even obligatory to ex-
amine briefly her understanding and use of technique. Her creed in fiction is obviously that of the realists -- although her adherence to it is not so rigid as to preclude her from an occasional excursion into romanticism. And her novels are not only realistic, but they are in the best sense of the term Zolaesque -- that is to say, they have an epic sweep and comprehension, an epic sense of the surge of life and the clash of multitudinous interests. This particular type of novel is so seldom successfully achieved in English that it seems well to call to mind just what are its characteristic features. The epic novel, like the epic poem, must have a twofold theme, a specific human story and a big general problem -- the wrath of Achilles and the Trojan War; the expulsion from Eden and the Fall of Man; the fate of Uncle Tom, and the whole problem of slavery. And the very essence of this epic quality lies in the ability to tell the specific, central human story, and hold and stir you with the pathos and the tragedy of it, and yet all the while keep before you the realisation that this specific story is only an isolated case of a general and widespread condition; that Achilles brooding in his tent is only a symbol of the pervading wrath and sorrow and desolation begotten by war; that the empty cabin of Uncle Tom is only a symbol of the cruelty, the broken ties, the inhumanity attendant upon slavery. It is a curious fact that Mrs. Stowe, probably without any conscious understanding of technique, produced an almost perfect epic novel according to principles that were destined to be formulated fully half a century later. And it is equally curious that the first American woman since Mrs. Stowe to succeed in writing a genuine epic novel should also have chosen a similar setting and a similar theme.
To state the case more correctly, it is curious that the first woman among our modern writers to achieve this type of novel should have happened to be a Southern woman. Because, since Miss Glasgow happens by birth and education to have a knowledge of Virginian scenes and people beyond that of other parts of the world, she has simply been obeying the most elementary principle of good technique when she chooses for her setting the region that she knows best; while such a volume as The Wheel of Life, in which the scene is laid in New York, is to be classed, in spite of much that is good, among the number of the author's blunders. One feels in this New York story as though Miss Glasgow were slightly out of her element, as though she lacked sympathy even for the best of the characters in it, and frankly disapproved of the others. It is even more difficult for a woman than for a man to attain the attitude of strict impersonality which is demanded by the highest rules of modern construction -- and herein, one feels, lies one of Miss Glasgow's failings. She could not, if she would, help showing us how her heart goes out to certain favourite characters, young and old, white and black alike -- nor would we have it otherwise, because in her affection for these people, whom she understands so profoundly, lies the secret of the abiding charm which they in turn possess for us.
Human stories, strong, tender, high-minded, her volumes undeniably are. But what one remembers about them, even after the specific story has faded from the mind, is their atmosphere of old-fashioned Southern courtesy and hospitality, of gentle breeding and steadfast adherence to traditional standards of honour. She has dealt with special skill with the anomalous and transitory conditions of society that followed the close of the war -- the breaking down of old barriers; the fruitless resistance of conservatism to the new tendencies of social equality; the frequent pathetic struggles to keep up a brave show in spite of broken fortunes; the proud dignity that accepts poverty and hardship and manual labour with unbroken spirit. Such books as The Battle-Ground, The Deliverance, The Voice of the People, are in the best sense of the term novels of manners, which will be read by later generations with a curious interest because they will preserve a record of social conditions that are changing and passing away, more slowly yet quite as relentlessly as the dissolving vapours of a summer sunset.
II. HER THEMES
In order, however, to understand on the one hand just how she uses her
technique, and on the other how she succeeds in giving such poignant reality to her people and her scenes, it is necessary to examine in somewhat more detail at least a portion of her books. And The Battle-Ground, as one of her earlier works, and also one that reaches back historically to the time of the Civil War, forms a convenient starting point. It is besides one of the most obvious instances of Miss Glasgow's characteristic method of epic structure. In the first place, it deals with the wide, general theme suggested by the title -- and in this wider sense the central figure is not a person but a State, the State of Virginia; and the story is the story of that State before, during and immediately after the four years of devastating struggle. But more specifically The Battle-Ground is the intimate history of one Southern family, the Lightfoots, or rather of one member of that family, Dan Montjoy, whose mother, old Major Lightfoot's only daughter, had made a runaway match with a hot-headed, mean-natured scamp, who had cost her a brief misery and an early death. Dan Montjoy comes naturally by his hot temper, but for the most part he is a true Lightfoot, and the idol of his grandfather's old age. But there comes a day when impetuous youth leads Dan into certain foolish escapades that his grandfather takes too seriously; angry, unforgettable words are exchanged, and the young man goes forth penniless, to fight his way in the world alone, leaving home, friends and the girl he loves. What he might have made of himself under other conditions is a question that Miss Glasgow does not even touch upon; but it happens that this quarrel occurs on the eve of the Civil War; Dan's secession from the family circle coincides with the South's withdrawal from the Union. And so, throughout the rest of this powerful war novel, we see a double struggle waged upon a double battle-ground -- the struggle of a family of federal States at war with each other; and the struggle of a human being for independence of the ties of blood. And in the end, when the South as a whole is brought to accept defeat, Dan has learned still another and more personal lesson, and returns once more, wiser and happier with the sober happiness of maturity, to those at home who have never ceased to hope for his coming.
Similarly, in The Deliverance there is a double significance of title and of plot. "After the battle come the vultures," says a Union soldier in The Battle-Ground -- and in a broad, general way, The Deliverance may be said to symbolise the sufferings of the South in the years immediately following the war, when so many of those who had constituted the wealth and pride and aristocracy of the country saw their remaining possessions wrested from them by corruption and by fraud. Christopher Blake is only a single instance of this widespread injustice and robbery. He has seen his father die, broken in body and in mind; has seen the magnificent estate, that had been for two centuries the property of the Blakes, sold at auction and bought in for a beggarly sum by Bill Fletcher, his father's former overseer. Nothing can be done in a legal way; for Fletcher has been careful to see that all documents and account books that might serve as evidence against him were destroyed by fire. Christopher, a mere boy, with a crippled mother and two sisters on his hands, finds himself turned adrift, with no refuge save the overseer's former cabin and a few acres of tobacco fields, down in one corner of the estate which should have been his own. The mother, paralysed and blind, is transferred, all unaware of the change, one day when she is carried out for her accustomed airing. Knowing nothing of the fall of the Confederacy, of the death of Lincoln, of the freedom of the slaves, she lives on in a world of her own imaginings, nurtured on an elaborate tissue of lies, daily issuing orders to an army of slaves who no longer exist, and delicately partaking of broiled chicken and sipping rare old port, while son and daughters exist painfully on hoe-cake and fat bacon. Such is the tragic and impressive symbolism by which Miss Glasgow pictures to us the contrast between the hopes and the humiliations of the South. And in the story of the Blakes we see not merely a single family tragedy, but behind it an entire country given over to desolation,
with countless estates passing into unworthy hands, countless impoverished families taking up unaccustomed burdens and cherishing in their hearts a mortal bitterness because of the dead dream of the confederacy that refuses to be forgotten. But in the case of Christopher Blake there is another and more specific story. As a boy, his first mad impulse after being turned from his home, was to murder Fletcher; but the impulse once checked had turned to a smouldering hatred, a fixed and secret determination for revenge. Fletcher has two grand-children, a girl and a boy. The girl, Maria, marries and goes abroad, before Christopher has had time to determine whether his feeling for her is hatred or love. Toward the boy, Will, he has but one feeling, and that is a steadfast longing to use him as an instrument of vengeance. The boy is the one living thing that old Fletcher loves; therefore, by making him a liar, a coward and a drunkard, Christopher feels that he is paying back with interest the wrongs the Blakes have suffered. He never once realises the unworthiness of his own conduct until Maria, after some years of marriage and widowhood, returns home, and they meet once more and know that they love each other, that in fact the feeling they had cherished as boy and girl had needed only a word to make it flame into love and not hatred. But Christopher has himself done a vulture's deed, in accomplishing the ruin of Maria's brother; and when the lad in a drunken frenzy kills his grandfather, Christopher, realising his own moral responsibility, aids the other to escape and gives himself up as the murderer. Deliverance finally comes, so the book seems to preach -- deliverance of the land from vultures like old Fletcher, deliverance of men like Christopher from the curse of their own mad deeds -- but neither the one nor the other may be hurried; they come only with patience, in the fulness of time.
III. HER MATURE POWER
There are two other volumes by Miss Glasgow, separated by an interval of nearly a decade, which nevertheless deserve to be analysed together, because of the interesting contrast they afford: The Voice of the People and The Romance of a Plain Man. Throughout all of her books, one notices a theme to which Miss Glasgow reverts again and again, with never-flagging interest, and that is the theme of unequal marriages. Under the changed conditions of the reconstruction period it was inevitable that the old distinctions of race and breeding, the old prejudices against honest toil and industry should be to some extend modified; and that the daughters of impoverished families should not in all cases think that they were stooping if they wedded brave and honourable men whose fathers perhaps had been mere plain tillers of the soil. This problem, in its various aspects, Miss Glasgow has approached over and over again; but it is only in the two books now under discussion that she has frankly made it the central theme. Far apart as they are in other respects -- since The Voice of the People is not without crudities of construction, while The Romance of a Plain Man is easily Miss Glasgow's finest achievements up to the present time -- the two books offer a curious parallel of plot for very nearly the first half of their development. Nicholas Burr and Ben Starr are both small, barefoot, not over-clean boys when they first meet, in the one case, Eugenia Battle, in the other Sally Mickleborough, spick and span and freshly starched -- and in each case the small girl makes the small boy exceedingly uncomfortably by declaring that she cannot play with him because he is "common." In each case the childish insult fires a latent ambition; Nicholas Burr confides to kindly old Judge Bassett his secret hope of some day becoming a judge; and Ben Starr similarly owns to General Bolingbroke, who happens to be president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, his own determination to work his way up eventually to the presidency of that same road. In each case the boy's ambition both amuses and pleases the busy man, and in each case the boy's education is cared for, his way made smooth, and the first steps toward his ultimate goal are guided by a wise and protecting hand. And in the later book Sally Mickleborough is brought to acknowledge, precisely as Eugenia Battle
acknowledges in the earlier, that "common" was a mistaken and an unjust word, and that she is glad and proud to give her heart and hand to the man who has already achieved so much for her sake. But here the two books part company.
Ellen Glasgow
In each of them the pride of the girl's family forms an almost insurmountable barrier; in each of them there is another man who by birth, fortune and education seems expressly designed for the girl's husband. In the earlier book Miss Glasgow decides that between Nick Burr and Eugenia Battle there is too great a gulf ever to be bridged over even by love; a stray scrap of scandal touching him, too hastily believed in by her, estranges them permanently; she marries the man in her own class, while he goes on doggedly climbing the rungs of the political ladder, to his final goal as governor of the State. The voice of the people, through the ballot, has given him his political ambition; the voice of the people, through the tongue of scandal, robbed him of married happiness; the voice of the people, through the mad frenzy of a mob, bent upon lynching a negro whom he, as
governor, has sworn to give a fair trial, robs him of his life. And the woman lives on, in a marriage that has brought neither joy nor sorrow, finding her only real emotion in the cares of motherhood.
The Romance of a Plain Man is a book as much bigger and stronger as a decade of steady growth can well make it. To begin with, Miss Glasgow has realised that such a story, concerning itself mainly with the inward growth of a man's character, has everything to gain and nothing to lose by being seen through the man's eyes. Therefore, she tells it in the first person. Secondly, she realises that when two people care for each other with the fierce, unreasoning passion either of Nick and Eugenia or of Ben and Sally, they are not likely to let either small obstacles or great ones come between them; that they will brush aside entreaties, warnings and commands, and take their chances of being either supremely happy or utterly miserable. In the marriage of Ben Starr and Sally Mickleborough the author, if we rightly understand her, wishes to show how difficult it is for a man sprung from a humble and rather vulgar source to understand the finer feelings of those more gently born. For Sally's sake Ben Starr wants wealth and education and power; and for her sake he wins them, rapidly, surely and with apparent ease. He wants them first to prove to her that he is not "common"; and afterward, having won her in defiance of her family and her social world, he continues to strive for more money, more power, more positions of trust, always with a fixed idea that they will bring her greater happiness. And here is where he makes his one great mistake, that almost wrecks their married life in mid-course. He does not realise that his absorption in the big game of finance leaves him little time even to think of his wife, and none at all to place at her service. Because the obvious difference between himself and the men in Sally's own class is money and position and education, he makes the natural mistake of thinking that the attainment and possession of these things is in itself the key to social equality, the one thing essential to his happiness and hers. And the last and most important lesson in his whole course of self-education he is slow in learning -- that the essential thing does not lie in these achievements but behind them -- it lies in a man's power to mould his own character until he is capable of attaining his goal. It is not a bank account, nor a directorship in a railway, nor social recognition, nor a knowledge of the Odes of Horace that in themselves win and hold the love of a woman like Sally Mickleborough; but without the energy and persistence to compass these things, Ben Starr would not have been the kind of man to win her. But having once won her, though he should lose his money, forget his Latin, find himself under a social cloud, she is the sort of woman who will cling all the more loyally -- and with feminine illogic be the happier for serving him. This lesson Ben Starr might have learned early in their married life, during temporary reverses, when for some weeks Sally is slowly nursing him back to health after a desperate illness, and incidentally earning their daily bread with her own frail, unaccustomed hands. Had he been less of a "plain" man, and gifted with a little more subtlety, he would have seen that for these few weeks they were nearer to true happiness than at any time before. But as a matter of fact he does not see, but goes on toiling, amassing, reaching out for more power, more fame, and year by year approaching his boyhood's ambition, the presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Midland Railroad. And at last it is only under the stress of a great sorrow and a greater fear; only when he sees his wife's life trembling in the balance, that this essentially plain man receives enlightenment, and realises that the path to happiness may lie through the deliberate sacrifice of a life-long ambition.
Such in brief is the substance of Miss Glasgow's latest volume, which at the same time is her most thoughtful, most mature, and altogether biggest novel. It is a peculiarly American novel, since it symbolises with a subtlety that is essentially feminine and a force that is almost virile the practical limitations of the doctrine that all men are born free and equal.
Frederic Taber Cooper.