The Mentor, Vol. 1, No. 25, American Novelists, by Hamilton Wright Mabie

 

 

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The Mentor

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

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Vol. 1

No. 25

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AMERICAN NOVELISTS

HENRY JAMES WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS THOMAS NELSON PAGE

JAMES LANE ALLEN WINSTON CHURCHILL OWEN WISTER

By HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

This group of distinguished novelists may be divided into four smaller groups, not only in time, but in selection and treatment of subjects. Mr. James and Mr. Howells are now the senior members of the literary fraternity in this country, and have not only American but European reputations. Only three novelists before them attained this distinction. The earliest of these, Cooper, is still read in many parts of the world, and in little German villages boys call themselves “Cooper Indians,” and play at oldtime savage warfare. The author of the “Leatherstocking Tales” wrote the first original American novel, and Hawthorne wrote the first American romance. The first described the manners and customs of a people whom he knew at first hand, but whom Europe knew only by hearsay; the second analyzed the motives and described the workings of the Puritan spirit, and showed how the consciousness of sin worked itself out in the Puritan character. The theme was new, and the manner of treating it was both effective and beautiful—and Hawthorne remains the most artistic writer this country has produced.

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The next novelist to whom Europe paid attention was Mrs. Stowe. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was like a great torch held up over a fiercely disputed field; it showed men and women living under all conditions of slavery, paternal and humane on one hand, and commercial and cruel on the other. It made a drama of a political issue, and was read with bated breath by a million people. It interested Europe because it was a powerful story dealing with a situation that had attracted the attention of the whole Western world; it was at once translated into several languages, and could be found from London to Constantinople.

HENRY JAMES

When Mr. James began writing a generation ago there had been no American fiction of a high order for twenty years or more, and the country had grown rapidly in experience and knowledge. Mr. James showed this more cosmopolitan attitude toward the world, and his style had a quality which was new in our fiction. It was clear in those days; it had great flexibility and capacity for conveying fine distinctions and delicate shadings of thought; it had a tone of maturity which was lacking in the earlier writers, and it was the medium of expression of a thoroughly trained man to whom writing was a fine art. The early[3] short stories, of which “The Passionate Pilgrim” may serve as an example, arrested attention by reason of their insight into character and their fine workmanship. There was an air of romance about them; but it was the romance of human temperament, not of incident. The early novels were not popular in the sense of running into large editions; but “The American” found many readers who were quick to appreciate its penetrating and searching analysis of character, its sharp contrasts of American and European traits, and the refinement of a style which is both rich and restrained.

All novelists reveal character; but those in whom the dramatic instinct is strong show it chiefly in action. Mr. James brings out character largely by means of analysis and description, and for this reason he is often classed among the psychological novelists. In his later years the habit[4] of analysis grew on him to such an extent that the movement of his stories was impeded and his style became complex and at times obscure. In a time when social relations between America and Europe were becoming more intimate, Mr. James found a rare opportunity of studying American character against a European background, and in the whole range of fiction there have been few writers of more acute penetration, of greater delicacy of stroke and line in painting character, than he. He was one of the small group of American authors to whom the word “distinction” may be applied.

W. D. HOWELLS

Mr. James was a student of men and women in society, using that word in its narrower sense; Mr. Howells, who is also a keen observer, has dealt with less sophisticated men and women, and has given us American types unmodified by other influences. A man of deep sympathy with his fellows and sharing in his heart the sorrow and pain of the common lot, a lover of Tolstoi and a professed realist, with a strong leaning toward constructive socialism, Mr. Howells has kept his fiction free from any kind of preaching. He has understood his vocation as an artist, and has not made his novels serve his social and political doctrines. Although a man of strong convictions, he is a writer whose touch is notably light, and whose humor is delightfully unforced and happy.

Born in the Central West, Mr. Howells has kept its democracy of spirit and reinforced it by familiarity with modern languages and literature. In his lighter work he has made studies of the whims and foibles of certain feminine types in this country, of such fidelity that they have disturbed those who believe that Americans should tell the truth about themselves only to themselves, and that to take Europe into the national confidence is a kind of petty treason. But if Mr. Howells has seemed sometimes to draw American women with too light a hand, no one so well as he has conveyed a sense of the purity of American women, and the wholesome[5] tone of American social life outside the very limited circle of what is known as the “Fast Set,”—a group of men and women who are representative not of a nation, but of the attitude toward life so strikingly defined in “The House of Mirth.” In his graver mood Mr. Howells has given us “The Rise of Silas Lapham,” one of the lasting achievements of American fiction, and “A Hazard of New Fortunes,” both original studies of American life during the age of great fortune-making. The charm of Mr. Howells’ art and the refinement of his humor have not given him the popularity of the more dramatic novelists; but he has made a place of high importance for himself in American literature, and in the hearts of a host of readers who have discerned in him a singularly pure and lovable nature.

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

The aftermath of the war between the States was an idealization of the old social order in the South. Mr. Page and Mr.[6] Allen found in the tradition and habit of the Old South elements of a romance founded on reality. Society in the South before the war received its tone from men and women bred in habits of deference and courtesy, sensitive to any slight put upon honor, and prodigal of hospitality. It had rested on an unstable basis; but it had those delightful qualities which came with leisure, easy conditions, and the absence of commercial spirit. This vanishing order found in Mr. Page’s earliest stories a record true to life and yet enveloped in the air of romance. “Marse Chan,” “Unc’ Edinburg,” and “Meh Lady” gave the country a thrill of pleasure, so sure was their appeal to sentiment, so refreshingly human and unforced, a rich and picturesque life of its own, a fresh field for the romance of spiritual adventure and social habit.

In these moving tales, told with unobstrusive artistic skill, the long-suspended literary tradition of Virginia received an impulse which has since given the country a group of stories of original quality.

JAMES LANE ALLEN

Never did pioneers carry into a new country a finer blending of the daring which moves the frontier farther from the old centers, and the chivalry of romance for women and idealization of emotion and experience,[7] than went into the fertile and beautiful Kentucky country in the days which followed Boone’s adventurous career, and produced the types of character which appear in James Lane Allen’s “The Choir Invisible.” The Blue Grass country found in him a lover who was also an artist, and the background of his stories is sketched with exquisite skill. “The Kentucky Cardinal,” “Aftermath,” and the stories in “Flute and Violin” have not been surpassed in beauty of diction in our fiction. If one might venture to predict long life for any contemporary writing, he would not hesitate to put the short stories of these two Southern writers among American classics.

Mr. Page and Mr. Allen have written long stories as well; in several instances dealing with contemporary life and manners. Mr. Allen has kept in the field of character study with increasing emphasis on the influence of environment. The title of one of his later stories, “The Mettle of the Pasture,” suggests the relation of the actors in the drama to the soil on which they live, while the lifelike study of the horse-breeder in “The Doctor’s Christmas Eve” is a portrait which could not have been drawn outside the boundaries of Kentucky. Mr. Page in his later stories has dealt with the spread of the commercial spirit, the conditions in which women work, political corruption, and social changes.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Mr. Wister and Mr. Churchill have one great interest in common,—they are deeply concerned with American character and experience. Mr. Churchill has dramatized our history in a series of works, beginning with “Richard Carvel” of the Colonial period; continued in “The Crossing,” of the period of the first great westward emigration[8] through the passes of the Alleghenies; in “The Crisis,” a picture of struggles between the old North and the old South, between 1861 and 1865, localized in St. Louis; and in “Mr. Crewe’s Career,” a study of the “machine” in politics and the beginnings of the struggle for popular government which has become a national movement. Mr. Churchill draws with a free hand on a large canvas, and his works have epic quality, emphasizing large and significant movements and defining the place of individuals in them, rather than presenting delicately sketched portraits of men and women in the narrower range of personal experience.

OWEN WISTER

Mr. Wister has the gift of picturing real, vital characters, and his stories are full of a brilliant and moving life. His people are not only alive, but intensely and actively alive. A man bred in the best social traditions, a graduate of the oldest American university, Mr. Wister was fortunate enough to know the frontier at the very moment when[9] the forces of business and the second great Western movement were about to destroy it. Most men who wrote about the old frontier, either in fiction or in plays, were concerned with its melodramatic aspects,—its guns, and shirts, sombreros, and bucking broncos. Mr. Wister saw the character behind these stage costumes; he recognized the fiber of the men,—their courage, their spirit of comradeship, their rough but genuine humor, their passion for wide horizons and the freedom of the life of the plains. In “The Virginian,” and the short stories from the same hand, our fiction has a series of studies of types of character now almost extinct, and of a stage of life which has disappeared. When “Lady Baltimore” appeared, Mr. Wister had passed from society in an elemental stage to a Southern community which has preserved its oldtime qualities of refinement of manner, dignity of habit, and a hospitality which is the very flower of high breeding and ease of condition. And Mr. Wister was as much at home in Charleston as on the old frontier; a fact highly significant of the quality and fiber of the man. Among American novelists he will hold a place of his own by reason of the vitality and artistic skill of his work.

Mrs. Wharton’s stories, even more than those of Mr. James, describe a social life which has taken its tone largely from an older and more conventional society, which has lost its moral simplicity in the complexity of an age of highly organized luxury, and which has taken on the easy ways of a social life that is entirely comfortable in conscience so long as it feels itself secure in matters of taste. In art Mrs. Wharton is an expert by intuition and practice. The author of “The House of Mirth” is analytical, and secures her most striking effects, not by boldly projecting her characters on a large canvas, but by uncovering their most elusive moods, their obscure motives, the conflict of temperament, character, and social traditions.

Such a power of lighting up hidden processes of thought as Mrs. Wharton possesses needs the reënforcement of an art which is both vigorous and sensitive; and this art is always at Mrs. Wharton’s command.[10] She has both precision and delicacy. She can draw a character in detachment with such vitality of insight and of portraiture that it holds the attention without the aid of accessories; or she can sketch a cross-section of society with convincing energy of stroke. She is the recorder of a highly sophisticated society, more or less relaxed in tone and corrupted by luxury.

Mrs. Deland’s method is broader and her emotions of wider interest. She has painted one portrait which the whole country loves. Dr. Lavender has taken his place in the small group of imaginary Americans who are as real as historical Americans. He is a type dear to Americans, because his nature is sweet without a touch of weakness, his vision clear without hardness, his moral perception relentlessly keen but never divorced from pity and sympathy, and his humor fresh and abounding. And Mrs. Deland has also the gift of construction, and has written two or three novels which must be counted among our best fiction.

No list of contemporary American writers of fiction would be complete without the names of F. Hopkinson Smith, John Fox, Jr., Dr. S.[11] Weir Mitchell, and Miss Mary Johnston. Mr. Smith has gained skill as a writer steadily as he has gained skill as a painter; and in the small group of stories which bear his name two or three are likely to be read for a long time to come. “The Fortunes of Oliver Horn” shows Mr. Smith’s art at his best, for it is art of the heart as well as of the brain and hand. His romance has permanent elements of human nature; idealism, loyalty, and love are the soul of it.

Mr. Fox, who also finds his characters largely in the South, has drawn the picture of the primitive mountain types in the Kentucky hills with the charm which comes from great simplicity and from an intimate knowledge of the people he describes.

Miss Johnston, who began by writing romances pure and simple, has dramatized the story of the Civil War in two able novels, “The Long Roll” and “Cease Firing.” It is not easy to characterize these stories in a phrase, nor is it necessary. They are written with a kind of quiet passion which gives the current sufficient volume to carry an enormous amount of history without sacrificing dramatic interest.

Dr. Mitchell, like Dr. Holmes, revealed himself in several different capacities, as physician, as poet, as essayist, and as story writer. His novels are characterized by inventiveness, by dexterity, by freshness of feeling. “The Adventures of François” is a capital piece of story-telling; while many people regard “Hugh Wynne” as the best semi-historical story which has appeared in this country. In other novels Dr. Mitchell showed his skill as a psychologist.

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HENRY JAMES

Monograph Number One in The Mentor Reading Course

A number of years ago Henry James was at work on a volume of short stories. “And when will it be ready?” he was asked.

“Oh, I never know,” he said. “I work by easy stages.”

That sentence gives the keynote to the character of the great novelist himself and of his writings. He wrote carefully, easily, and neatly.

Born in New York City on April 15, 1843, Henry James spent most of his boyhood in Europe. His father was Henry James, the theological writer, and from him the novelist derived his idiomatic, picturesque English. His brother became Professor William James, the psychologist and philosopher, who died in 1910.

Henry James entered Harvard Law School in 1860; but found out soon that he cared more for literature than for law. His first short story was published in 1865, and many stories and sketches quickly followed this.

After 1869 he made his home in England, living in London, or Rye in Sussex, for the most part. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1911 received the degree of L. H. D. from Harvard.

Mr. James dictated all his work to a secretary, and he rewrote and polished it from a typewritten copy. With his writing he took infinite pains. His sentences are long and involved at times; but in spite of this confusing fact his sentences are balanced and complete.

His whole life showed the same ordered neatness as his books. His library was carefully selected and shelved. His letters were always arranged in little piles of the same size. One man tells that during a call on the novelist he saw him, when the ash had collected on the end of his cigarette, walk the length of his study and snip it out of the open window.

Henry James has been called a modern of the moderns as a novelist. He described contemporary life. His characters are people of the world; but they are subtle and complex. The human element predominates.

He is not widely read, because the public finds him hard to read. As someone said, “His books need to be translated for the average reader.” This is due in part to his use of long and involved sentences, and in part to his subject matter.

His career was a happy one. It was long, and was free from serious mistakes. His talent and point of view were personal. He had a crowd of imitators; but none of these approached the master in greatness.

There was one side of the character of Henry James, the man, of which few people knew. Never did a man in need come to him whom he did not offer to help. Years ago, when James was deriving an income of less than $1,500 a year from his writing, a novelist died in England. He died in poverty, leaving two little children absolutely alone in the world. A friend assisted the children and wrote to other literary men asking for help. One literary man, whose income was over $200,000, was appealed to in vain. Among those from whom aid was asked was Henry James. A check for $250, more than a sixth of his whole year’s income, arrived from him by return mail.

Henry James died in London on February 29, 1916.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Monograph Number Two in The Mentor Reading Course

The “Dean of American Letters”—that is what William Dean Howells is called. He is and has been for half a century the literary leader of America, and well he deserves the title! James Russell Lowell said of him that he “is one of the chief honors of our literature.” He has never written a bad sentence, never struck a false note. He is the leading representative of the realistic school of American fiction.

William Dean Howells might with truth be called a “self-made man of letters.” He was born at Martin Ferry, Ohio, on March 1, 1837. His father, William Cooper Howells, was a printer and editor, whose library was large and well chosen for that time. It was in this library that the future novelist picked up most of his education. As usual in a small country town, the regular schooling consisted only of the “three R’s”; but Howells was an omniverous reader. He particularly enjoyed poetry. It is said that even as a small boy he wrote verse, setting it into type himself. Whether this was ever printed is not known; but surely some space in his father’s newspaper must have been found for these productions of his juvenile pen.

In 1851 the family fortunes met with disaster, and Howells went to work as compositor on the Ohio State Journal at a salary of four dollars a week. He soon graduated into journalism, and at the age of twenty-two was news editor of the Columbus, Ohio, State Journal.

Howells’ first published work appeared in 1860. The “Poems of Two Friends” were written with John J. Piatt. He began to contribute to the Atlantic Monthly, then just founded, about this time also. A campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln was written by him in 1860. For this he was appointed consul at Venice, where he remained until 1865. There he studied the Italian language and literature, and broadened his education considerably.

On his return to the United States he wrote for the New York Tribune and the Nation for a time. Then in 1866 he became assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, becoming editor six years later. He was a model magazine editor.

For awhile he contributed to Harper’s Magazine; then he became editor of the Cosmopolitan, and in 1900 revived “The Editor’s Easy Chair” for Harper’s. He is at present the writer of this department.

Mr. Howells has received many honorary degrees. Harvard and Yale have both conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts, while he has received the degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale, Oxford, Columbia, and Princeton, and the degree of Doctor of Laws from Adelbert College. In 1909 he was elected president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 1885 the novelist has lived in New York City.

Howells is a great realist and a perfect artist in words. He was once asked if he never lost himself in his work and was carried away by what he was writing.

“Never,” he answered. “The essence of achievement is to keep outside, to be entirely dispassionate, as a sculptor must be, molding his clay.”

And indeed of all American writers Howells comes the nearest to success in holding the mirror up to Nature.

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

Monograph Number Three in The Mentor Reading Course

Above all things Thomas Nelson Page is a Virginian, by birth, by family, and in his writings. Born on the old plantation of Oakland in Hanover County, Virginia, he can boast of two grandfathers who were governors of the state, one of these, Thomas Nelson, being a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It is Virginia and Virginians “before the war” and during the reconstruction period that he has sought to portray in his books.

Thomas Nelson Page opened his eyes in old Virginia on April 23, 1853. He was a rather precocious boy. Many a beating did he receive at school for stealing time from his lessons to write short stories on his slate for the amusement of his companions. He entered Washington and Lee University when he was only sixteen years old. He remained there three years, and then after spending a little time in Kentucky decided to enter the law department of the University of Virginia in 1873. He finished the work there in about half the time usually required, and began practising in Richmond, where he remained until 1893.

Page had always felt the charm of times gone by. He tried to follow the law faithfully; but more and more strongly came the call to picture artistically “a civilization which, once having sweetened the South, has since well nigh perished from the earth.” He yearned for the old plantation life,—the stately mansions of his forefathers, the grandeur to which those men and women of other days attained, and the overgrown fence rows and fields of his own country home.

Finally he decided to write. “Marse Chan” was published in 1884, and won the author immediate recognition. People of both the North and South were enthusiastic about it. The author himself tells how he came to write this tale:

“Just then a friend showed me a letter which had been written by a young girl to her sweetheart in a Georgia regiment, telling him that she had discovered that she loved him, after all, and that if he would get a furlough and come home she would marry him; that she had loved him ever since they had gone to school together in the little schoolhouse in the woods. Then, as if she feared such a temptation might be too strong for him, she added a postscript in these words: ‘Don’t come without a furlough; for if you don’t come honorably I won’t marry you.’ This letter had been taken from the pocket of a private dead on the battlefield of one of the battles around Richmond, and, as the date was only a week before the battle occurred, its pathos struck me very much. I remember I said ‘The poor fellow got his furlough through a bullet.’ The idea remained with me, and I went to my office one morning and began to write ‘Marse Chan,’ which was finished in about a week.”

“In Ole Virginia,” a collection of three stories of negro life and character, was published in 1887. This is perhaps his most characteristic work. Many stories, essays, and poems followed.

Uncle Billy in Page’s story “Meh Lady” is a distinct creation. At the wedding of his mistress and the Union captain in the old, dismantled home, the minister asks, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” His lady is without a relative, and Uncle Billy sees that it is up to him. But he doesn’t want to take the responsibility; so stepping forward he answers solemnly, “Gord.”

Thomas Nelson Page is never sectional in his writing. Everything that he writes tends to bring about better feeling between the North and the South.

He is now ambassador to Rome, appointed by President Wilson.

JAMES LANE ALLEN

Monograph Number Four in The Mentor Reading Course

A historical novelist worthy to rank with Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Lane Allen has been called. Both have given us pictures of the lives of our forefathers; but, while Hawthorne has shown us New England, Allen draws the Blue Grass region of Kentucky and its people.

It may be due to the fact that James Lane Allen was a seventh child that he has achieved such remarkable success in literature. He was born in Fayette County, near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1849, the youngest child of Richard and Helen Allen. He can number among his paternal ancestors some of the first settlers of Virginia. One of these ancestors, Richard Allen, moved to Kentucky, where he lived the easy, hospitable life of a gentleman farmer on his large estate.

Mr. Allen’s mother was a descendant of the Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish and the Brooks family of Virginia. A native of Mississippi, she was a lover of nature and literature. She inspired in her son a love for reading old romances, poetry, and history.

Although Allen was only twelve years old when the storm of Civil War broke over our country, he was old enough to realize its horrors and the suffering that it brought to the people of the South. Just before the beginning of the war his father lost his fortune; so the formal education that Allen received was small; but under his mother’s guidance he pursued his studies at home. Long walks in the fields and forests about his home gave him a keen insight into nature.

He was graduated from Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1872, and three years later received a degree of A. M. from there. A little before this his father died, and James had to begin teaching in order to meet expenses. He spent a year as master in a country school, walking six miles to and from the school every day.

For two years he taught in Missouri and then came back to Kentucky as a private tutor. He was called to his alma mater to teach, and two years later Bethany College, in West Virginia, offered him the chair of Latin and higher English.

He planned to go to Germany for a time; but gave this up when the idea of becoming a doctor of medicine attracted him. This was when he was doing graduate work at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But his love of literature led him to take up writing, and in 1884 he moved to New York. He arrived there unknown and with no letters of introduction; but “he took up his abode in a garret and started out in a very humble way.” He sent letters to the New York Evening Post, poems to Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly, and essays to the Critic and the Forum. A criticism of Henry James’ “Portrait of a Lady” first attracted attention to the young author, and soon there was a strong demand for his sketches of Kentucky life. “The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky” was the title given to the collected volume of these sketches.

Mr. Allen then moved to Cincinnati; but later moved again to Washington, believing that the capital of the country would be the future home of literature and art in America. In Washington, however, he found too much social and official distraction; so he returned to New York.

“The Kentucky Cardinal,” published in 1895, is one of Mr. Allen’s best books. It is a sort of pastoral poem in prose, showing the struggle between Nature and Love. “The Choir Invisible” shows the noble love of a married woman for a man who is not her husband.

James Lane Allen is best known as a writer of fiction; but he has also published many critical articles and much verse. He is recognized as one of the most poetic and dramatic of American novelists.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Monograph Number Five in The Mentor Reading Course

Although he graduated from Annapolis in 1894, Winston Churchill never served in the navy. Instead, immediately after completing his studies he began writing. He had found out that he could write when he was still at Annapolis, and decided that fiction rather than the navy was his line of work. For this the young graduate had fine equipment. Annapolis gave him self-reliance and determination. Those graduates of the Naval Academy who have not gone into the navy have usually been successful in whatever they have done. This is particularly true in the case of Churchill. Well educated, at the same time he is full of the joy of life itself, and likes all sorts of outdoor sports. He is a favorite everywhere.

Winston Churchill was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 10, 1871, and spent the first sixteen years of his life there. From a school in St. Louis he went to Annapolis. There he became strongly interested in American history and problems, and made up his mind to devote his life and energies to these. In the brief intervals between studies and drills he gathered much of the material that he afterward used in his novels.

While at Annapolis he stood among the first five or six in his class. He also reorganized the crew and was captain for a year. He likewise played a good game of football. Fencing, tennis, and horseback riding are his favorite sports.

For awhile after graduation he worked on the Army and Navy Journal, and then joined the staff of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. During this time he wrote a great deal; but did not attempt to publish these first experiments in fiction.

He married in 1895 and moved not long afterward to his home at Cornish, New Hampshire. Churchill was very fortunate. He did not have to earn a living by doing hackwork, and could take plenty of time with anything that he wrote.

It is said that genius is the capacity for taking great pains. Winston Churchill surely illustrates this adage. Hard work, determination, and a keen sense of values made him the successful novelist that he is. He was ambitious to write the very best he knew how. Once, when living in St. Louis, he hired an office and went down to it as regularly as any other man of business. His writing was business, and was treated as such.

He rewrote “Richard Carvel” at least five times. He worked from breakfast until one o’clock, after lunch for two or three hours, and after dinner often far into the night. This, the first of three of Winston Churchill’s novels dealing with American history, became the most popular book in the United States. “The Crisis,” the second of these historical novels, appeared a few years after “Richard Carvel,” and in 1904 “The Crossing,” the last of the trilogy, was published. The background for “The Crisis” was the Civil War, and “The Crossing” dealt with the great western movement across the country.

Churchill has served in the New Hampshire legislature, and also ran for the governorship of that state. “Coniston” was a direct outgrowth of his political associations. The novel is a story of politics, with a charming love story running through it.

Winston Churchill is still a young man, and there is every reason to believe that his best and biggest work is still to come.

OWEN WISTER

Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course

It is remarkable how many successful writers get into literature by accident. Very few novelists begin by taking up writing as a profession: most of them drift into it from other fields. Owen Wister was no exception to this. He settled down in Philadelphia to practise law; but the call of the pen was too strong for him. He was thirty-one years old before he began to write.

Owen Wister is a grandson of Frances Anne Kemble, better known as Fannie Kemble, the famous actress. He was born on July 14, 1860, in Philadelphia. When he was ten years old he was taken to Europe, where he remained three years. On his return to this country he entered St. Paul’s School, Concord, whence he went to Harvard, graduating in 1882. He took highest honors in music.

At Harvard he showed that he could write when he produced a libretto, “Dido and Æneas,” for one of the Hasty Pudding Club entertainments. When there he also edited one of the college papers, and in his junior year wrote a poem on Beethoven, which was published in the Atlantic Monthly.

With the intention of becoming a music critic Wister went abroad once more. He began the study of composition under Liszt in Paris. In 1883 he changed his plans and returned to America. His health was bad; so he went hunting in Wyoming and Arizona.

He found not only new strength, but a new world. The stirring atmosphere of the West woke in him a desire to write about it; but he did nothing at this time. He returned east and entered the Harvard Law School. He graduated in 1888, and a year later was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia.

But the West had great attraction for him. In the next ten years he made fifteen trips there. He soon saw that law was not his career.

In 1891 a series of studies and stories of the West by Wister started in Harper’s Magazine. These were later gathered together in a volume called “Red Men and White.” All the characters in these sketches were true to life; the Indian was the Indian of fact, and the cowboy was the cowboy of reality.

When Wister first began to write a fellow-townsman and critic of him said, “Owen Wister has written some creditable stories; but so, to be sure, have many others. His real strength lies in musical criticism.” This opinion hardly holds good today.

“The Virginian” is the best thing that Wister has done. It is absolutely realistic. This is a quality of all this author’s work, as is shown by an anecdote he himself tells:

“Once a cowpuncher listened patiently while I read him a manuscript. It concerned an event on an Indian reservation. ‘Was that the Crow reservation?’ he inquired at the finish. I told him that it was no real reservation and no real event; and his face expressed displeasure. ‘Why,’ he demanded, ‘do you waste your time writing what never happened, when you know so many things that did happen?’”

So well was the story told that the cowboy had believed he was listening to facts.

“Lady Baltimore” was another successful novel of Wister’s, and besides he has written several interesting biographies, the best of which is “The Seven ages of Washington.”

Wister is not only a writer. He has actively fought for decent government in Philadelphia. At one election he ran for city councilman of his ward, knowing that his fight was hopeless. He is an American through and through, and in his books he portrays the best things in the life of our country.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, No. 25

The Mentor