Constance Fenimore Woolson: Literary Pioneer [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512803082

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Constance Fenimore Woolson

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

C O N S T A N C E F Ε Ν I Μ Ο RΕ W Ο Ο L S ΟΝ Literary Pioneer

By

JOHN DWIGHT KERN Professor

of

Temple

English University

Philadelphia UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

PRESS

LONDON: H U M P H R E Y M I L F O R D : OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS J

934

COPYRIGHT

1934

University of Pennsylvania Press Manufactured

in the United States of

America

Acknowledgments THE most pleasant task in connection with the preparation of this critical biography is that of acknowledging my grateful appreciation to the many individuals who have aided me. T o Mr. W . R. Benjamin, dealer in autographs, and to Mr. Samuel Heiman, both of N e w York City, I am indebted for the loan of a number of letters of Miss Woolson which throw considerable light upon her literary methods. I am most grateful to Mr. Philip H. Jewett, the well-known Philadelphia reviewer, for his kindness and ingenuity in locating for m e a copy of The Old Stone House. Others w h o m I wish to thank for their help in collecting material are Mr. H . C. Chandler, town clerk of Claremont, N e w Hampshire; and the Librarians of the University of Pennsylvania Library, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Mercantile Library of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the N e w Y o r k City Library, and the Western Reserve Historical Society, of Cleveland. In order to establish the accuracy of Miss Woolson's picture of local conditions I visited both the lake region and Florida. A t Mackinac Island, Miss Eleanor Gallagher and Dr. A n n a L . Kelton were both very kind in showing me the chief points of interest and in introducing me to various individuals who were familiar with the quaint lore associated with that beautiful resort. In St. Augustine, Mrs. A . W . Underwood, of the St. Augustine Historical Society, was most helpful in guiding my quest for information about that region. My especial thanks are due to Miss Clare Benedict, niece of Miss Woolson and author of the invaluable collection, Five Generations, to which I make frequent reference throughout this book. Recently, before returning to her home in Italy, Miss Benedict was good enough to grant me an interview, in V

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

vi

the course of which she very graciously corrected several errors in my account of Miss Woolson's life. She also authorized h e r L o n d o n publishers to furnish m e with the portrait of Miss W o o l s o n which serves as a frontispiece to this study. T o Professor A r t h u r H . Q u i n n of the University of Pennsylvania I wish to express my gratitude for the constant advice a n d supervision which, m o r e than anything else, enabled m e to finish this work. I also a m glad to acknowledge the kindness of Professor Paul H . Musser, of the University of Pennsylvania, in reading and criticizing my manuscript. J . D. K. Philadelphia,

August

1933

Contents CHAPTER

I II

T H E PERIOD OF P R E P A R A T I O N

1

T H E L A K E C O U N T R Y WRITINGS

9

III

THE SOUTHERN PERIOD

IV

MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS—1 8 7 0 - 1 8 7 9

V VI VII

PAGE

46 .

.

.

97

L I F E A N D W O R K IN E U R O P E

I0g

CRITICAL WORK

166

CONCLUSIONS

174

BIBLIOGRAPHY

180

INDEX

195

I

The Period of Preparation IT is a familiar phenomenon in the history of literature, especially in America, for a writer to lose in the succeeding generation the fame achieved among contemporaries. T h i s loss of reputation may result from the ephemeral nature of a writer's literary wares, or from a marked and unpredictable change in public taste. Such a change accounts for what I believe to be a temporary eclipse of the literary reputation of the object of this study—Constance Fenimore Woolson. T h e critics of the '70's and '8o's were almost unanimous in their high praise of her fiction. T h e y regarded her as one of the outstanding women writers of her generation and as one of the most capable masters of the novel and short-story forms among writers of either sex. A significant example of such praise, uttered by one w h o exercised the most careful discrimination, is contained in a letter of Henry James to W . D . Howells, written in Paris on February 21, 1884: " I t is rather hard that as you are the only English novelist I read (except Miss Woolson), I should not have more comfort with y o u . " 1 N o critic was in a better position than James to appreciate the painstaking care that entered into almost everything Miss W o o l s o n wrote, and his statement is simply the tribute of one artist to another. Miss Woolson began her work d u r i n g a period of transition in American fiction. T h e r e was already in progress in 1870, w h e n she started to write for the magazines, an awakening of literary interest in the sectional feelings that had been so deeply stirred by the recent conflict. T h e spread-eagle na1 The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols., Charles Scribner'e Sons, New York, 1920. I, 105. Italics are mine. 1

C O N S T A N C E F E N I M O R E WOOLSON tionalism which was the inevitable result of the reunion of the states was not at all inconsistent with the regionalism following in the wake of the war. Bret Harte gave great impetus to this renewed interest in local color with " T h e Luck of Roaring Camp," first printed in The Overland Monthly, in 1868. In the following year Mrs. Stowe began her Oldtown Fireside Stories in The Atlantic Monthly, and in 1871 Edward Eggleston published his Hoosier School-Master. Although these writers were ostensibly trying to present California, Indiana, and New England, respectively, to their readers, their concern with fact was more nominal than real. Essentially they were romanticists, viewing various parts of the American scene with a Dickens-like attention to oddity of character and setting. An influence of an entirely different kind was expressed in the novels of the Rev. E. P. Roe and in the "Saxe H o l m " stories, written by Helen Hunt Jackson. T h e i r fiction was representative of the unvarnished sentimentalism that had been a characteristic product of the '5o's, but for which there is at all times a large market. Standing apart from the work of the other two groups with a certain aristocratic alienation were the early stories of Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Henry James, in which conscious artistry and attention to form were important features. T h e n , too, realism had found an able champion in the person of W. D. Howells, who had already begun his presentation of that medial sector of American life of which he was destined to become the leading interpreter. T h e influence of all these schools of fiction is discernible in the stories and novels of Miss Woolson. She cannot, however, be catalogued merely as the product of a certain literary influence or set of influences. Her work, like that of every other author, shows indebtedness to others; but her writings also have an authentic individuality which it shall be a purpose of this study to indicate. Before discussing the various aspects of Miss Woolson's literary works, it is necessary to consider briefly the circumstances of her ancestry and early life in order to observe the

T H E PERIOD OF PREPARATION

3

part they played in shaping her career as a writer. The fact that she used her full name, Constance Fenimore Woolson, for literary purposes, suggests her interest in keeping alive the Cooper tradition of which she was an heir. Her mother, Hannah Pomeroy Woolson,2 was in turn the daughter of Ann Cooper Pomeroy, elder sister of James Fenimore Cooper. It was materially advantageous to Miss Woolson to keep the public aware of this relationship, and only natural that she should remind readers, by her own signature, of her literary antecedents. Charles Jarvis Woolson, father of the writer, was the descendant of two old New England families. He was the son of Thomas Woolson, born in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1777, and of Hannah Peabody, daughter of David and Hannah Chandler, of Andover, Massachusetts. Thomas Woolson, who married Miss Peabody in 1805, removed to Claremont, New Hampshire, about 1813, and there established himself as a successful inventor and manufacturer. In 1806, the year after the marriage of Thomas and Hannah Woolson, their son Charles Jarvis Woolson was born at Chester, Vermont. Miss Woolson, in a sketch of her father's life, 3 says that as a child he had a taste for reading and was very fond of driving horses. As a young man he went to New York alone, and finding a partner there, accepted a contract to publish a life of Jefferson. Later, in Boston, he purchased a share of the New England Palladium, a daily and weekly newspaper. In 1830, at the age of twenty-four, he married Hannah Cooper Pomeroy, of Cooperstown, New York, daughter of George and Ann 2 For genealogical notes on the Woolson and Cooper families, see the three volumes of Five Generations, ed. Clare Benedict, London, 1929-1932. These are Voices Out of the Past, 1929; Constance Fenimore Woolson, 1930 and 1932: and The Benedicts Abroad, 1930. These volumes, particularly the second named, contain also many letters, literary notes, posthumous works, etc., of Miss Woolson, and are indispensable to the student of her life and writings. I shall refer to them hereafter in my notes as Benedict, I, II, and III, in the order named above. References to Constance Fenimore Woolson will be to the 1930 edition, except where the date 1932 is expressly stated. T h e two editions of this volume are identical, except that the 1932 reprint contains additional selections from her stories and poems, and a bibliography begun by Miss Woolson and completed by Miss Benedict. s " A Brief Sketch of the Life of Charles Jarvis Woolson," in Benedict, I, 94-101.

4

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

Cooper Pomeroy and niece of James Fenimore Cooper. T h e young couple settled in Claremont, and there produced in rapid succession six daughters, of which Constance was the youngest. There appears to be no legal or religious record of her birth, but the evidence points to March 5, 1840, as the date. T h e encyclopedias, following the account of Arthur Stedman, 4 give March 5, 1848, as the date of her birth. T h e day and the month given by Stedman seem to be correct, although there is no documentary evidence to support the fifth of March as the exact date. But unless Miss Woolson's own mother was mistaken, the writer could not possibly have been born in 1848. T h e j o u r n a l 5 of Mrs. Woolson, referring to the birth of her sixth daughter, who can positively be identified as Constance, contains the following statement: After a winter of unusual health and happiness, in the early days of March, came Number Six, a fat, sweet, healthy, little girl. When she was but two days old, scarlet fever appeared in our family, and in three short weeks, three of our dear little ones entered Paradise. Now the Grave Stone Records From the ancient Cemeteries in the town of Claremont, New Hampshireshow that three "daughters of Charles Jarvis Woolson and sisters of the late Constance Fennimore [52c] Woolson"—Ann Cooper, Gertrude Elizabeth, and Julia Campbell Woolson—died on April 3, March 22, and March 24, respectively, in the year 1840, and are buried in the Old Village Cemetery. It is incredible that Mrs. Woolson could have been mistaken about a matter of this kind, and there is no reason to doubt that Constance was born on March 5, 1840. Soon after her birth and the untimely death of her three sisters the family removed to Cleveland, Ohio. There two more daughters and finally a son were born. Charles Jarvis Woolson, after establishing himself in * "Constance Fenimore Woolson," The Book-Buyer 309-11. 5 Benedict, I, 164. 8 Ed. Charles B. Spofford, Claremont, 1896, p. 42.

(October 1889), VI,

T H E PERIOD OF P R E P A R A T I O N

5

business in Cleveland, became one of the promoters of the Cleveland Savings Bank and Senior Warden of Grace Church. Of Miss Woolson's early life in Cleveland there are few records. She was evidently a youngster of more than ordinary curiosity and was consequently nicknamed " A n d Why?" 7 In a letter 8 written as a child to a friend in New York, Constance says that she, with her sister Clara and brother Charley, was attending Miss Hayden's School and intended to go to Wisconsin the next summer on a visit. In her biographical sketch of her father, Miss Woolson makes it clear that as a young girl she was in the habit of accompanying him on his long drives through Ohio and Wisconsin and on vacation trips to the family cottage at Mackinac Island. These journeys are most significant in view of the later use of the scenes in her writings. As a student in the Cleveland Seminary, which she attended after leaving Miss Hayden's School, Constance first began to manifest that interest in the written word which was later to give her distinction. A letter to Miss Guilford, 9 her teacher at the seminary, written many years later, is an acknowledgment of indebtedness and an interesting recollection of youthful days: . . . I am so very glad, dear Miss Guilford, that you liked "East Angels." I have long wished for a word from you, since it was from you that I first learned how to write. Do you remember the wonderful and ceaseless pains you used to take with our compositions? . . . a vision rises before me of the "Cleveland Seminary"—with its furnace-heated air; its crowds of girls, the woods behind with their early spring flowers, and you, and Prof. St. John and Miss Barstow taking charge of us all. I see the snow as it used to drive slantingly across the wide, empty fields outside my window on the north side of the house; I see the white road going towards town. . . . τ Benedict, II, n. 16. β Ibid., II, 15. • Ibid., II, 39.

6

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

Another letter to Miss G u i l f o r d tribute to her assistance:

10

is even more specific in its

For myself, I feel that I owe you much. T h e pains you took with my crude compositions; the clearness with which you made my careless eye notice the essential difference between a good style and a bad one; your praise, when I (not very often) deserved it; your discriminating, careful censure, which did me more good than all—these were, and still are, invaluable to me. I must have tried your patience, and I might, no doubt, have profited much more than I did, from your teachings. But it was the start you gave to the faint taste which enabled it later to grow in the right direction. (At least I hope it is right). D u r i n g her years of literary apprenticeship, Constance was aided also by George A . Benedict, publisher of the Cleveland Herald, whose son later married the youngest surviving Woolson daughter, Clara. T h e initial composition of Miss Woolson, we learn from a letter, 1 1 was a poem suggested by " H i a w a t h a " : " I t is associated with those romantic days when we had a summer cottage at Mackinac, and the first original writing I ever did was a 'poem' (Heaven save the mark!) an imitation in the same style." A m o n g the other products of her literary minority may possibly be listed some anonymous articles mentioned by A r t h u r Stedman 1 2 as having been contributed to Episcopal periodicals before 1870. A t the age of eighteen—that is, in 1858—Constance, according to her sister, 13 was graduated from Madame Chegary's school in N e w York City, at the head of her class. T h e r e she had studied the usual subjects offered at fashionable boarding schools and had gained added distinction from the beauty of her contralto voice. Immediately after her grad10 Benedict, II, 41-45· 11 Ibid., II, 47. 12 Op. cit., VI, 309-11. Stedman says that Miss Woolson's friends were displeased when she began to write for the secular press. Diligent search, however, has revealed no evidence of any contributions to religious magazines before 1870. 13 Benedict, I, 292, n.

T H E P E R I O D OF P R E P A R A T I O N

7

uation Mr. Woolson supplied his daughter with pretty clothes and took her, together with her mother, her brother, and her sister Clara, to all the places where the family had formerly lived. T h e y visited the fashionable resorts about Boston, where Constance was a great success socially, and then made a genealogical expedition to Wollaston, Massachusetts, afterwards the subject of a magazine article. 1 4 Miss Woolson herself tells us that " d u r i n g the war I took charge of a post-office in one of our huge sanitary fairs, and a m o n g my literary wares I was so fortunate as to procure a n u m b e r of autographs—among them, some of General J o h n A . D i x . " 1 5 O f her other activities d u r i n g this period there apparently exists no account. A l t h o u g h there is evidence in various allusions of the family records to her many trips to Mackinac Island as a girl, w e know definitely that Miss Woolson made a journey to that resort in the latter part of July 1869. D u r i n g the last weeks of his life 1 6 her father wrote a letter to his daughter Clara, dated July 29, concerning this incident: 1 7 First and most prominent now in diis House is the fact that yesterday Miss Connie Woolson, with her own big Trunk and my "Russet" and a satchel, went "festively" on board a nice, clean, new propellor, "St. Laurence," bound for Mackinac. . . . Everything was propitious, and just what Connie wanted, especially the time of day the boat left, insuring the entering and going through the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair by daylight. Robert Chamberlain sent her a lot of new French books, and she had everything very much to her mind and went away in the most jubilant spirits. T h e fact that Miss Woolson began to write for the magazines within a year after the death of her father suggests that 14 "The Bones of our Ancestors," Harper's New Monthly Magazine (September 1873), XLVII, 535-4'· it· "Spots," Lippincott's

Magazine

( M a y 1871), VII, 539-45.

ie Charles Jarvis Woolson died on August 6, 1869. See Grave Stone Records, 42. " B e n e d i c t , I, 109-10.

8

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

financial considerations may have influenced her decision in this matter. There are, in fact, many statements in her letters to members of the family during the '70's which show that Miss Woolson was worried about money matters and felt called upon to work very hard in order to insure a respectable income. T h e writings of Miss Woolson can readily be classified into four groups: works on the lake country; works on the South; miscellaneous verse and prose with little reference to geography; and stories and sketches with a European setting. These divisions, except the third, correspond roughly to the location of Miss Woolson during the twenty-four years of her literary activity. Until 1875 her youthful experiences in the region of the Great Lakes provided her with literary material, almost exclusively. During the years between 1873 and 1879 she lived most of the time in various parts of the South and from 1875 used Southern material most frequently in her writings. After the death of her mother in 1879 and until her own death in 1894, Miss Woolson lived in Europe, and, as was her wont, used the foreign setting as a background for characters who were, for the most part, Americans. These chronological divisions of Miss Woolson's literary career must not, however, be regarded as mutually exclusive. In her novels, particularly, as can be readily seen from their dates of publication, she continued to employ the background of the lake region and of the South long after she had left those sections. Since it is rather evident in Miss Woolson's work that the setting rather than the time of composition is the important consideration, it shall be the purpose of this study to treat her works in accordance with the classification already given, and to introduce into the discussion such biographical details as will promote an understanding of her contribution to American literature.

II

The Lake Country Writings IN 1870, when interest in regional literature had been aroused to a high pitch by the publication of Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories, Miss Woolson was in a position to satisfy the popular demand for the picturesque by utilizing in a literary way that knowledge of the vast lake section which she had stored up during her residence in Cleveland since earliest childhood. A most remarkable characteristic of this early work is its generally high quality. Within three years after she began to contribute to the magazines she was writing stories that are quite as good as anything she produced later in her career. But it is likely that she wrote and destroyed many a manuscript before attaining that distinction of style which admitted her work to the leading periodicals of the time. During the first five years of her literary activity Miss Woolson did not write exclusively about the territory surrounding the Great Lakes, but there is no doubt that this region served as a background for the best of her stories and articles. Three groups of writing comprise the output of this lake-country period: descriptive sketches, short stories, and poems. In the '8o's she employed the lake setting as a partial background for two of her novels—Anne and Jupiter Lights — a t a time when other scenes were engaging the major portion of her interest. But since the setting rather than the chronology of her work is its distinctive feature, it shall be my practice in this study to consider together all of those works relating to each of the regions with which Miss Woolson was identified. Magazine articles descriptive of the lake region and adja9

C O N S T A N C E F E N I M O R E WOOLSON cent sections constitute the first of Miss Woolson's works published in the secular periodicals. In her own bibliography of her writings, 1 Miss Woolson says: " T h e first magazine article I wrote was ' T h e Happy Valley.' It was accepted by Harper's Magazine and published in J u l y , 1870. T h e second article I wrote was 'Fairy Island.' It was published in Putnam's Magazine in J u l y , 1870." In addition to these two sketches, Miss Woolson contributed six other articles to the magazines during the next three years pertaining to the region of the lakes. Like her famous contemporary, William Dean Howells, Miss Woolson began her literary career with the publication of descriptive sketches, before venturing into the more difficult field of fiction. In " T h e Happy Valley" 2 Miss Woolson presents an idealized account of life in a little German community in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. T h i s village is not a lake town, but, as in her later stories, Miss Woolson stretched the term "lakecountry" to include places many miles distant from the shores of our five inland seas. She describes in this sketch the trip that "father, Sadie, and I " made to the "happy valley" along the Tuscarawas River. T h e y traveled beside the moss-grown dykes and rich fields bordering that stream, to an idyllic village, unnamed but obviously Zoar, and hemmed in on all sides by forest-crowned hills. T h e r e the stolid Wiirtemburgers lived their unimaginative lives in bovine contentment. Money was not used in that communistic society, and the various tasks were performed by a division of labor according to aptitude. Romantic love seemed to be completely absent, and the men treated the women with indifference. One church trustee, for example, when the pastor remonstrated with him on his bachelorhood and pointed out the advantages of a certain Paulina Β as a wife, calmly married her the same afternoon. A f t e r the ceremony both the bride and 1 Benedict, II (1932), 550-53· This bibliography was completed—insofar as it is complete—by Miss Benedict. 2 Harper's New Monthly Magazine (July 1870), X L 1 , 282-85. For a less idealized description of the Zoarites see Charles Nordhort, The Communistic Societies of the United States, 99 ff., Harper and Brothers, New York, 1875.

T H E LAKE C O U N T R Y

WRITINGS

groom phlegmatically returned to work. T h e Zoarites had a domain of ten thousand acres, upon which was located a coal mine, iron ore, mills, and factories. O n e bakery supplied all the bread of the community, and one nursery cared for the children while the mothers worked. Despite the fact that the natives seldom ventured more than three miles from home and lived lives of almost incredible simplicity, the aged members of the society were said to have on their faces a look of vast contentment. T h i s brief summary serves to indicate that in her very first literary effort Miss W o o l s o n was concerned with bringing to the attention of her readers the picturesque and unusual features of life in an isolated community where the characters were not dissimilar to those described in Wordsworth's poems about the English lake country. T h e second of Miss Woolson's descriptive sketches, "Fairy Island," appeared in the same month as her first article, though in another periodical. 3 A g a i n the title suggests a romantic interest in the byways and hedges of the A m e r i c a n scene. In this essay she describes Mackinac Island, situated in the straits between Lake H u r o n and Lake Michigan, and presents a short and not altogether accurate account 4 of the history of that immediate region. She mentions Father Pierret, the Parisian priest of the island, w h o figures under his real name of Piret in several of her later stories and under another name in Anne. T h e village of Mackinac and the half-breed inhabitants of the island are described in considerable detail. In the voyageur song which she quotes, " M a c k i n a c " rimes with "saw" and " d r a w , " in accordance with the pronunciation of the word u p o n which the inhabitants of the region still vehemently insist. T h e story of the expedition of the natives to drive " K i n g Strang" and his M o r m o n followers from Beaver Island is an interesting presentation of a little-known episode in A m e r i c a n history. T h e r e is also a description of 3 Putnam's Magazine (July 1870), VI (n. s.), 62-69. 4 See Edwin O. W o o d , Historic Mackinac, 2 vols., T h e Macmillan Co., New York, 1918. In I, 34 η., and I, 364, W o o d points out certain errors in Miss Woolson's account, which he says "is at least vivid and heroic, if not exactly true in every particular."

12

C O N S T A N C E F E N I M O R E WOOLSON

Fort Mackinac, where the soldiers added a certain pageantry to life in that northern Michigan outpost. T h a t storms are a not uncommon feature of life on the lakes she makes clear by telling of the plight of the steamer Queen City, which lay sheltered at Round Island all day to escape th^ fury of the storm, put off for Mackinac in the evening, and just succeeded in reaching the harbor safely. T h e storm scene in Anne is quite probably suggested by the actual occurrence described in "Fairy Island." T h e article closes with a reference to the beauty of Indian summer on the northern lakes, just before the fury of winter descends upon them. In this sketch Miss Woolson evinces an interest in Mackinac which comes naturally as a result of youthful associations, and displays itself later in the form of stories, poems, and a novel. Even in late life the spell of the island remains potent, and in her letters Miss Woolson is prone to use Mackinac as a criterion in determining natural beauty. It is significant, too, that at a time when Miss Woolson was seeking to establish herself as a successful writer, she chose a background similar to that employed by Cooper in The Pathfinder. By writing about a region made familiar by her famous granduncle and by suggesting the relationship by the use of her full name, Miss Woolson showed herself to be a woman of sound business sense. For two years Miss Woolson was busy writing stories and verse, and it was not until J u l y 1872 that she published any more descriptive articles. T h e n there appeared in the same month two sketches: " I n Search of the Picturesque" 5 and "American Cities.—Detroit." 0 T h e first of these describes a trip by carriage made by the author, her sister, and her grandfather. Obviously, this essay is reminiscent of a trip made by Constance in her youth, in the company of her father and sister. She recounts the disillusioning nature of their experiences. T h e y were not able to get good food at any of the villages, and were enveloped in dust or mired in mud on the 0 Harper's New Monthly Magazine (July 1872), X L V , 161-68. Appleton's Journal (July 27, 1872), VIII, 85-92.

8

T H E LAKE COUNTRY WRITINGS

13

corduroy roads. In one village the two girls were taken for medicine sellers, in another for female "suffragers," and in a third for circus performers. Then one night they arrived at a coal mine instead of the village they were seeking. Fortunately, they found lodgings in a nearby farmhouse, but the next morning they took a train back to the city, thoroughly disgusted. Here, as in her later work, Miss Woolson displays a shrinking from the sordid aspects of life that was doubtless the result of her education and breeding. The article on Detroit is, as the title suggests, one of a series of essays on American cities written by various individuals. It is an historical sketch of Detroit from its settlement in 1610 by the Jesuits to the time when she was writing. The article is a lengthy consideration of the early and more romantic period in the history of the city and is accompanied by illustrations of Detroit as it appeared in 1872. If Miss Woolson was asked to contribute this article, as seems altogether likely, she must already have been considered an authority on matters pertaining to the lake region. T w o months later there appeared a travelogue called "Round by Propeller," 7 in which the author, called Aunt Ruth, accompanied by her niece and nephew, embark on the boat Columbia for a trip from Buffalo to Chicago. With a minute care that the state of public knowledge evidently made necessary, Miss Woolson describes the boat itself, the food served on board, and of course the other passengers. These latter are identified, with what is evidently humorous intention, by such names as Faust, Mephisto, Brown Eyes, and Curlylocks. T h e party examine an oil refinery in Cleveland, stop at Detroit, and then travel through the St. Clair Flats, at that time barely navigable. The boat stops at Mackinac Island for two hours, and while there the passengers visit, under the guidance of one Major Archer, the Wishing Spring and the Devil's Kitchen. From Mackinac Island the boat proceeds to Milwaukee, where the sight-seers visit the new Soldiers' Home. At Chicago, the next stop, the party scatters. 7

Harper's

New Monthly

Magazine (September 1872), X L V , 518-33.

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON They learn later that Major Archer has been killed by Indians in the West, thus fulfilling his Mackinac wish for a sudden death. In March 1873 there appeared a sketch written but not signed by Miss Woolson and entitled "Mackinac Island." 8 Here she contrasts the newness of the lake cities with the "picturesque island of Mackinac, venerable with the memories of more than two centuries." After commenting on the simplicity of life on the island, Miss Woolson summarizes the three periods of its history. These were the periods of exploration, of military occupation, and of fur-trading. There follows a description of the chief attractions of the resort: the flora, Arch Rock, Fairy Arch, Sugar-Loaf Rock, Lover's Leap, "Robinson's Folly," Fort Holmes, Fort Mackinac, and the mission school established by Samuel Morse. She speaks in favor of the project then before Congress of converting the island into a national park, in order that its beauty might be more generally shared. (This project failed, but most of the island has since been converted into a Michigan State Park.) Again in this article Miss Woolson displays that thorough familiarity with Mackinac that is so conspicuous in her fiction relating to the region. " T h e Wine Islands of Lake Erie" 9 is an account, chiefly historical, of the southernmost lake, and a description of the famous vintages of the region. After a preliminary reference to the Erie Indians and Tecumseh, and to Perry's famous naval engagement in 1813, Miss Woolson dwells upon an interesting episode in Civil War history. It seems that John Yates Beall, a young Confederate aristocrat, attempted, in conjunction with a friend on land, to capture the Michigan, the only Federal warship on the lakes, as it lay off Sandusky. The plot failed, and Beall was hanged at Governor's Island, New York, on February 24, 1865. The Wine Islands, located in Put-in Bay, near Sandusky, were famous for their Catawba 8 Appleton's Journal (March 8, 1873), I X , 321-23. A part of this article is quoted in Benedict, I, 200-20, where it is attributed to Miss Woolson. T h e style of the essay is unmistakably hers. 9 Harper's New Monthly Magazine (June 1873), X L V I I , 27-36.

THE LAKE COUNTRY WRITINGS

15

grapes, of which they produced several varieties. Miss Woolson points out that there were manufactured on the islands more than three hundred thousand gallons of wine annually, all of a high quality. T h e article closes with an appropriate quotation from Longfellow's poem, "Catawba Wine." T h e last of Miss Woolson's magazine articles pertaining to the lake region appeared as early as November 1873, under the title, "Lakeshore Relics." 1 0 T h e author and her sister, with their Uncle John (probably their father), are sojourning at some unnamed lake city—possibly Detroit—within sight of the Canadian border. A n old naturalist tells them a story about the relics of an ill-starred British expedition against Pontiac. During their visit they witness a storm quite similar to the one which engulfed the forces of Major Wilkins in 1763 and of General Bradstreet in 1764, and this coincidence gives greater plausibility to the naturalist's story. In the neighborhood they find many relics of the unfortunate soldiers: skeletons, bayonets, etc. Again we see Miss Woolson as the interpreter of the romantic past of a section whose history was unfamiliar to the reading public. It was not until 1872 that Miss Woolson began to use the lake region as a background for fiction and verse. Such stories and poems as she had published prior to that time were written without reference to locality and were, as we shall see, the result of reading rather than of observation and experience. But once she realized the narrative possibilities of the lake country, she used that region until 1878 as the setting for twenty-three stories. Although the literary level of these tales is most uneven, several of them may justly be considered to be among the outstanding short stories of their time. Most of them deal with romantic love in one form or another, and in all the better stories there are strange and picturesque characters such as might be expected in the remote reaches of the northern lake country. But it would be a mistake to assume that Miss Woolson was interested solely or even chiefly in the regional peculiarities of the section. Characterization Lippincott's Magazine (November 1873), X I I , 606-11.

i6

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

is ever the dominant trait of her work, and even in her less effective tales, she never loses sight of the fact that the infinite complexities of human nature, rather than the physical conditions of life, are the proper concern of fiction. An analysis of these stories, most of which are available only in the magazines where they originally appeared, will serve to show that some of them have a literary value that has been too soon forgotten. T h e stories of the lake region can readily be classified under four groups, dependent upon geographical setting. These are: stories of Lake Superior; tales of Mackinac Island and adjacent territory; stories of the lower lakes; and narratives of north central Ohio. Lake Superior and the mining camps near its shores serve as the scenes of six narratives. T h e first of these, called "On the Iron Mountain," 1 1 is an example of sheer romance. It is the preposterous story of a crook with mesmeric powers who gained ascendancy over Helen Fay, one of a party of twelve who had journeyed from Detroit to Lake Superior. T h e thief, who called himself Victor Lee and claimed descent from the Virginia Lees, robbed the entire party and made his escape. Several years later, Marmaduke Preston, who had married Helen in the meantime, read to her a newspaper account of how Maryland Victor had shot himself when surrounded by a posse in a western canyon. T h e second of the Lake Superior stories, a vastly better piece, shows unmistakable evidences both in its title—"Misery Landing" 1 2 —and in its plot, of the influence of Bret Harte. In order to forget his love for a prima donna, and in a cynical mood, John Jay, in 1872, flees to a distant island in the western part of the great northern lake. T h e account of his experiences there with a poor waif named George, whose love for the homely and ignorant Marthy he tries to promote, is given in his diary. Jay's efforts to help these pathetic individuals aid him in rehabilitating his own thwarted life. Later, 11 Appletoris Journal (February 15, 1873), IX, 225-30. U Harper's New Monthly Magazine (May 1874), XLVIII, 864-70.

THE LAKE COUNTRY WRITINGS

17

after his return and marriage to his sweetheart in N e w Y o r k , he refuses to tell her about his experiences on the western island. It appears f r o m his diary that the reading of Harte's fiction had much to do with the change in J a y ' s philosophy of life. Of the C a l i f o r n i a romancer he says: After all, as long as I can read his pages, I cannot be so bad as I seem, since, to my idea, there is more of goodness and generosity and courage in his words than in many a sermon. He shows us the good in the heart of the outcast. I wonder if I am an outcast. N o truer criticism of H a r t e could be uttered than that contained in the italicized sentence; it explains the secret of his phenomenal success. A n d there is no reason to doubt that this passage expresses Miss Woolson's own opinion about the author of " T h e Outcasts of Poker F l a t . " A n o t h e r statement in J a y ' s diary makes even more evident Miss Woolson's admiration for her contemporary: Strange that it should be so, but everywhere it is the cultivated people only who are taken with Bret. But they must be imaginative as well as cultivated; routine people, whether in life or in literature, dislike anything unconventional or new. Since Miss Woolson was as thoroughly convinced as C o o p e r himself of the superiority of the educated and well born, it was only natural that in her desire to appeal to that class of readers she should use the means by which she believed Harte had accomplished that end. Even more plainly than in " M i s e r y L a n d i n g " is the influence of H a r t e discernible in the third story of L a k e Superior — " T h e L a d y of Little F i s h i n g . " 1 3 H a d this tale appeared bef o r e instead of after " T h e L u c k of R o a r i n g C a m p " it w o u l d unquestionably have created a much greater stir in critical circles. T h e narrator, in 1850, came to a little island in L a k e Superior, and met there, in a deserted village, an old charac1 * Atlantic Monthly (September 1874), X X X I V , 293-305.

18

C O N S T A N C E F E N I M O R E WOOLSON

ter who told him the story of the settlement. Reuben, as he was called, had thirty years before been one of the forty rough men who formed the lumber camp on this site. T h e n a beautiful missionary came, whom the men called T h e Lady, and through her influence transformed the lives of the rude lumberjacks. But soon she fell in love with Mitchell, the one man in the camp who was unaffected by her presence, and became ill when her feeling was unrequited. T h e men quickly diagnosed her ailment and lapsed into their former vices when they found that T h e Lady was only human after all. She recovered her health sufficiently to conduct services in the church that the men had built for her, and then before the entire group she confessed her love for Mitchell and begged him to take her away. Mitchell refused and left the camp. Soon after this incident T h e Lady died of a broken heart, and the camp was abandoned. Reuben then revealed himself to the narrator as the Mitchell of the story, and expressed his regret at rejecting the only woman who had ever been completely in love with him. T h e similarity of this story to that of Harte is, of course, obvious. Even the names of the characters—Nightingale Jack, Black Andy, the Doctor, the Flying Dutchman, and Frenchy—suggest that Miss Woolson was trying to imitate the "monickers" of the California miners. In certain respects, moreover, this story is superior to its predecessor. Though it is perhaps too sentimental, it is less so than Harte's tale, and besides has a balance which the more famous story lacks. A reviewer 1 4 of the time expressed the difference well: It ["The Lady"] has that internal harmony which is the only allegiance to probability we can exact from romance, and it has a high truth to human nature never once weakened by any vagueness of the moral ideal of the author—as happens with Mr. Harte's sketches, the only sketches with which we should care to compare it. κ In The Atlantic Monthly

(June 1875), X X X V , 736-7.

T H E LAKE COUNTRY WRITINGS

19

Probably the chief indebtedness of Miss Woolson to Harte lies not in similarities of plot and character, but in the expression of that moral contrast which, as she pointed out in "Misery Landing," was the most significant quality of the Californian. More grimly realistic than any other of her twenty-three lake stories is the fourth tale of the Lake Superior group— "Peter the Parson." 1 5 T h e scene is a mining camp on the shore of the great northern lake and the time is November 1850. T h e Reverend Herman Warriner Peters, nicknamed "Peter the Parson" by the rude miners, was the weak and ineffectual rector of the mission church of St. John and St. James. He was an earnest and sincere man, but was altogether out of place in this remote and uncivilized camp. Even Mrs. Malone, his landlady, made little effort to please him, and gave him only the coarsest and most unpalatable food. T h e one bright spot in his life was Rosamund Ray, a village girl who faithfully attended all of the many services because of her love for the rector. Steve, one of the miners, was jealous of "Peter" because of Rosie's love for him, and was ready to do him injury. One Sunday the miners found that the thief of the camp was none other than Brother Saul, an evangelist for whose crudity and ignorance Miss Woolson expresses through the rector a characteristic Episcopal contempt. "Peter," nevertheless, tried to save the undeserving Saul from the anger of the miners, even though he had himself suffered injury from a trap set by that hypocritical preacher. A miner revealed to the crowd, of which Steve was a member, that the "Parson" was not himself above reproach, since he had met Rosie secretly on the previous day. T h e charge was true, although the meeting had been innocent and at Rosie's request. But Steve became infuriated and killed "Peter" with a blow on the head. Both Steve and Brother Saul went unpunished, and in the following year Rosie, as a means of achieving gentility, married the new rector. T h e r e is no 15

Scribner's

Monthly

(September 1874), VIII, 600-10.

2o

C O N S T A N C E F E N I M O R E WOOLSON

compromise with reality in this tale of the martyrdom of a man who was at once weak and brave. T h a t it required real courage on the author's part to avoid the conventional happy ending is indicated by her own statement: 1 6 . . . And, under the abuse which has been showered upon me for my "brutal killing of Peter the Parson," I have steadily maintained to myself that both in an artistic and truthful-to-life point of view, my ending of the story was better than the conversion of the miners, "the plenty to eat and the happy marriage" proposed by my critics. Since it might be contended that this story represents a reaction from the philosophy of " T h e Lady of Little Fishing," which holds that even the rudest men sometimes display a surprising moral stamina, one must remember that only the beauty of T h e Lady and the admiration of the men for her person were responsible for the sudden improvement in their conduct, and that when they discovered that their idol had feet of clay they became backsliders immediately. As "Peter the Parson" had no personal charms whatever, it is natural that the miners should have been unmoved by his appeal to them through the difficult medium of the Anglican ritual. Here, as in later stories, Miss Woolson, like all true artists, was quite ready to allow a tale to end unhappily when the circumstances demanded such a conclusion. A religious settlement on the shore of Lake Superior is the scene of the fifth story of this group—"Mission Endeavor." 1 7 Richard Herndon, who had killed a companion in a drunken brawl, was condemned to death, before the Indians and an assemblage of New England religious fanatics, by Ephraim Danvers, elder of the group. Although Ruth Danvers, Ephraim's daughter, loved Herndon, she was incapable of finding any means of saving him. T h e n , shortly before the sentence was to be executed, Miriam, a saint-like woman, invoked an ancient Indian law which made it possible for a 18

In a letter to her nephew, Samuel Mather, in Benedict, II, 23. " Harper's New Monthly Magazine (November 1876), LIII, 886-93.

T H E LAKE C O U N T R Y

WRITINGS

21

w o m a n to claim a man. A t first E p h r a i m objected to her request, but finally he consented to let her have H e r n d o n if the two w o u l d marry. A c c o r d i n g l y ,

M i r i a m and

Richard

were married. For eight days they traveled together, a l t h o u g h at night M i r i a m slept alone in their canoe. T h e n , w h e n she recognized Richard's love for R u t h , M i r i a m departed alone for the Sault, leaving a note for her husband in w h i c h she m a d e evident her love for h i m and also made it clear that she c o u l d not hold h i m because she was already married. H e r n d o n , touched by her r e n u n c i a t i o n , confessed that he half loved her, but believed that after all he had had a " h a p p y escape." T h e element of local color is not stressed in this story, and the setting thus becomes rather u n i m p o r t a n t , except that certain of the characters and customs of the narrative c o u l d exist only on the northern frontier. M i r i a m , the central figure, represents a type of w h i c h (as w i l l be seen) Miss W o o l s o n was very f o n d — t h e w o m a n capable of great sacrifice for the m a n she loves. T h r o u g h this g a u n t

figure,

unprepossessing except for the nobility of her character, the a u t h o r again expresses that moral contrast she was so q u i c k to perceive in the lives of those w h o are weak in every outw a r d respect b u t w h o have w i t h i n t h e m the capacity for great c o u r a g e and unselfishness. O f only m i n o r interest is the sixth, and last, story of this group. T h e t i t l e — " T h e Old Five"

18—is

derived f r o m the

n a m e of an a b a n d o n e d m i n e at D e a d R i v e r , on L a k e Superior.

T h e tale is i m p r o b a b l e and d u l l and is far b e l o w the

standard of Miss W o o l s o n ' s best work. T h a t interest in ferns so o f t e n displayed in her later fiction, however, finds expression in the request of A d e l e F a m o that R o b e r t K e n r i c k find a rare specimen, called felix-mas,

w h i c h grows o n l y o n the

southern shore of the lake. K e n r i c k is saved f r o m an avalanche of stone by a p u p i l of A d e l e and he ultimately marries C a t h a r i n e W e l l s , a school teacher. Miss Farno, after strong u r g i n g f r o m her half brother, marries the wealthy K a n e Larr a m o r e . B u t the a u t h o r does not succeed in m a i n t a i n i n g the 18

Appleton's

Journal (November 1876), I (n. s.), 438-46.

22

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

reader's interest in these people, who remain unreal and unconvincing. T h e group of four tales relating to Mackinac Island is a natural product of the many summers spent at that charming resort during Miss Woolson's youth. These stories represent their author's first effort to convey by means of fiction those experiences and impressions which she had first brought to the attention of the public in her sketch of "Fairy Island." One of the most notable features of the first of the Mackinac stories, "One Versus T w o , " 1 9 is the characteristic insistence of the author on the preservation of social lines. John Free, the narrator, and his law partner, Warren Brenton, quarrel over the affections of Bertha Macpherson, whom they met during the summer at Mackinac. They race to the island in the hope that the first to arrive will win the girl. But when they reach Mackinac they find that an enterprising Scotsman has already married Bertha. Brenton and Free are reconciled on the trip south, and rather snobbishly regret their race for the affections of a girl who was not only fickle but was beneath them socially. Free is now more kindly disposed towards his friend Kate Vanderheyden (whose name is indicative of her unassailable social position), and Brenton is inclined to recognize the claims of his cousin Dora. Miss Woolson is unhappy in her portrayal of the masculine characters, especially in their quarrel, in which she seems to have confused them with two schoolgirls. T h e descriptive passages are easily the most successful portions of this story. T h e second of the Mackinac tales, " A Flower of the Snow," 20 is a romance of the frozen north. During the cold and desolate winter Miss Flower Moran taught a motley group of French, native white, and half-breed Indian children in a three-story frame house originally built as a dormitory for the Indians, but which they refused to use. T h e story treats of the love of Flower Moran for Lieutenant Maxwell Ruger, and of the attempt of Flower's pupil, the coquettish ι 9 Lippincott's Magazine (August 1872), X , 2 1 3 - 2 1 . 20 The Galaxy (January 1874), X V I I , 76-85.

T H E L A K E COUNTRY WRITINGS

a3

Jennie Brown, to steal his affection. In despair, Flower flees over the ice, and Max after her. Both nearly freeze, but finally reach St. Jean Mission, kept by Pere Ronan (obviously Piret). In the presence of the Canadian mail carrier, a half-breed, and five dogs, Pere Ronan marries the couple in the old log house at the mission. Of this famous priest and of the story itself Miss Woolson says: " T h i s successor to Pere Marquette still lives, 21 a hale old man, whose courtly manners vouch for the truth of his Parisian origin; he still lives up in the northern straits, for this story is founded upon fact, and its descriptions are taken from real life." There is an accuracy about the descriptive passages of this narrative to which any visitor of Mackinac Island can attest, and it is easy for the reader to believe that the tale is "founded upon fact." But neither in this nor in her later tales was Miss Woolson satisfied with that adherence to fact which a contemporary writer would probably seek to maintain; she invested her stories with a Cooper-like glamour of romance and of imagination which becomes an asset or a liability in accordance with the predilections of the reader. One is reminded in this connection of a passage from her granduncle's introduction to The Pioneers: 22 . . . rigid adhesion to truth, an indispensable requisite in history and travels, destroys the charm of fiction; for all that is necessary to be conveyed to the mind by the latter had better be done by delineations of principles, and of characters in their classes, than by a too fastidious attention to originals. Although she insists upon the factual basis of this story, as well as many others, and maintains it within certain limits, Miss Woolson is really as loath as Cooper to destroy "the charm of fiction" by a "rigid adhesion to truth" and "a too fastidious attention to originals." The famous French priest whom Miss Woolson delighted 21

Father A. D. Piret served at Mackinac Island from 1846 to 1874, although he retired to the Cheneaux Islands in 1870. See Capt. D. H. Kelton, Annals of Fort Mackinac (Byrne ed., 1890), 133. 22 Works of J. Fenimore Cooper, 10 vols., P. F. Collier, New York, 1 8 9 1 . 1 , 546.

24

C O N S T A N C E FENIMORE WOOLSON

to use in her stories figures again in the third tale of Mackinac, " T h e Old Agency." 23 T h e old residence of the Indian agents on the island, once occupied by Henry Schoolcraft, and destroyed by fire on December 31, 1871, serves as the setting for the narrative. O n one of her boat trips to the island, Mrs. Corlyne (who tells the story), found all of her fellow travelers uninteresting except an aged priest, who came aboard at Detroit and who proved to be Father Piret of the Cheneaux. Some days after they had reached the island and Mrs. Corlyne had engaged lodgings at the agency, Father Piret called and told about the old days of Mackinac, when the present lodging house was the chief residence. At the time of the story, however, the agency had been deserted for some time until it was occupied by the French soldier, Jacques, one of Napoleon's grenadiers. Piret had become acquainted with the eccentric Jacques, whose movements were clock-like in their regularity and whose devotion to his Emperor was almost pathetic. Naturally, his favorite poem was Heine's "Grenadier," which he was fond of reciting. One day when Piret came to visit Jacques he found him sitting in the sun—dead. T h e priest buried the old grenadier in his uniform, with all the memorials of his commander about him. T h e tale, obviously, is a simple one, but it is told with a distinction of style and choice of detail that mark the attainment of literary maturity. In none of her stories of Mackinac Island does Miss Woolson give us a more delightful and sympathetic picture of that historic spot than in " T h e Old Agency." Another excellent story of Michilimackinac is the fourth narrative of this group—"Jeannette" 2 4 —again told by Miss Woolson under the name of Mrs. Corlyne. T h e central figure is Jeanneton Leblanc, a fisherman's daughter of mixed English, French, and Indian descent, whom Mrs. Corlyne vainly attempts to civilize by giving her lessons in the elementary subjects. Rodney Prescott, a taciturn Boston surgeon, sta23 The Galaxy (December 1874), XVIII, 804-15. Scribner's Monthly (December 1874), IX, 232-43.

T H E LAKE C O U N T R Y WRITINGS

25

tioned at the fort, falls in love with the coquettish native girl. She uses all her arts to capture his attention, and even walks one day across the dangerous Arch Rock, much to his alarm. He confesses his love for Jeannette to Mrs. Corlyne, admitting at the same time that the girl is in every way unfitted to him as a wife. He offers to send her away to be educated to that position, but Jeannette is not interested in further education. Finally he persuades Mrs. Corlyne to accompany him to Jeannette's house, and in the presence of the older woman and of the stolid Indian mother, asks the girl to marry him. Jeannette scornfully refuses, and tells Rodney she intends to marry her childhood lover, Baptiste. T h e surgeon thereupon leaves the island for Florida and ultimately Europe. Some years later Mrs. Corlyne learns that Jeannette and Baptiste are living in squalor on the island with their brood of children. Here again we note Miss Woolson's firm recognition of social fitness as a necessary requisite to marriage. Then, too, this story, like " T h e Old Agency," contains some fine descriptions of various points of interest on Mackinac Island—Fort Mackinac and the Arch, particularly. T h e author remarks upon this characteristic of the story in a previously unquoted letter to her Boston publisher: 25 " I like it; but that is because it is such an accurate picture of Mackinac." T h e following passage from "Jeannette" is a remarkably compact impression of the island as a whole, and its descriptive power will be immediately perceived, especially by those readers who have visited this delightful northern retreat: Up in the northern straits, between blue Lake Huron, with its clear air, and gray Lake Michigan, with its silver fogs, lies the bold island of Mackinac. Clustered along the beach, which runs around its half-moon harbor, are the houses of the old French village, nestling at the foot of the cliff rising behind, crowned with the little white fort, the stars and stripes floating above it against the deep blue sky. Beyond, on all sides, the forest 25 T o James R . Osgood, from Asheville, North Carolina (October 22, 1874), relating to her forthcoming collection, Castle Nowhere.

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

26

stretches away, cliffs finishing it abruptly, save one slope at the far end of the island, three miles distant, where the British landed in 1812. That is the whole of Mackinac. The group of stories in the third class—those relating to the lower lakes—refers principally to the region south of the Straits of Mackinac and to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. T h e locale is not so well defined as in the other two groups of tales, and the scene tends to shift from one point to another in what is sometimes a bewildering fashion. T h e first of these narratives (in fact, the earliest of Miss Woolson's stories of the lakes), "Margaret Morris," 26 illustrates the old proverb that pride goeth before a fall. Bound for Rand's Point on the first lake boat of the season, the proud Margaret Morris refuses to associate with her fellow passengers. Upon her arrival at the little town she maintains the same disdainful air towards the inhabitants. Soon she embarks again on the Chippewa and resumes the voyage down Lake Michigan. Although the ship is wrecked in a violent storm, Margaret is saved by Edward Brown, a young passenger who had already aroused her resentment at Rand's Point. In order to keep her alive until they are rescued, Edward fires her temper by twitting her about her pride and New England antecedents. Even before they are picked up by a boat and brought back to the Point, Margaret realizes that she has been a snob. There in the little lake village she is further chastened when she discovers the hearts of gold beneath the rough exteriors of the townsfolk. She then gives a diamond to Edward, who is to marry another Margaret, and leaves on the Mohawk. In short, this story illustrates the value of that moral contrast by means of which Miss Woolson, in several tales already considered, was soon destined to achieve more signal success. But neither at this time nor at any later period was she ready to let down the social bars altogether. She allows Margaret to repent of her foolish pride, but she does not go so far as to permit Miss Morris to fall in love with Edward Brown, whose station in 28

Appleton's

Journal

(April 13, 1872), VII, 394-99.

T H E LAKE C O U N T R Y WRITINGS

27

life was below hers, even though he was a friend in time of great need. There is here, as well as in the author's later work, a determined observance of social caste that is decidedly reminiscent of Fenimore Cooper. Miss Woolson is willing to grant that the common people have their virtues, but she cannot bring herself to the point of sanctioning marriage between a gentlewoman and a man who has to work for a living. T h e second narrative of the lower lakes, called "Weighed in the Balance," 27 is, as the title indicates, decidedly a story with a moral. A group of people from Buffalo, of whose exploits Aunt Jane is the narrator, take a moonlight cruise down the Niagara River in a steam launch. Engine trouble develops, and the engineer falls overboard with the only wrench that can be used for repairing the damage. As the boat drifts downstream towards the falls, the plight of the passengers brings out their true natures. T h e conclusion points out that Pearl Brandegee, Alleyne Forsythe, and the Vanderheydens (Nathan Day and Mary Rathbone are exceptions) were "weighed in the balance and found wanting." Although no effort is made to describe the setting of this story, the proximity of Niagara Falls is the decisive factor in determining the strength and weakness of the characters. T h e narrative, however, is too obviously a sermon to be effective. T h e figures are mere types: a hero, a heroine, a coward, a selfish young woman, a drunken husband, a dissatisfied wife. T h e r e is evidence, though, even in this immature work, that Miss Woolson's primary interest was the portrayal of character rather than the development of plot. Perhaps the least effective of the lake stories is the third tale of this class—"Lily and Diamond." 28 Although the action takes place at Shorelands, a hotel in a lake city, it might just as well have happened at any other resort in the world. T h e plot deals with the complicated loves of a widow and a millionaire, and a young girl and a poor lawyer. T h e title, 27 Appleton's Journal ( J u n e 1, 1872), V I I , 589-94. 28 Ibid. ( N o v e m b e r 2, 1872), V I I I , 477-83.

28

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

which is only too patently symbolic, is suggested by the fact that Coast, the millionaire, puts up his diamond as a gage when Dakota Weston, the young girl of the story, expresses her desire for a water lily. T h e tale is obviously a pot-boiler and has virtually no literary value. It is somewhat anomalous to include among the narratives of the lower lakes the story of "King Log," 29 a tale of the lumber country northwest of Saginaw Bay, but at least it belongs in this class more properly than in any of the others. T h e story begins with the meeting of two Yale men in a lumber camp. One of them, called King Log, tells the other the story of his life. After his graduation from college and his father's loss of fortune and subsequent death, Log had become a wanderer and derelict. His fiancee, Lucy Darrell, had broken their engagement, and he had gone west to rehabilitate himself. Luny Jack, a harmless idiot, and his boy Gi or Guy, were the wanderer's chief companions. Log tried to take some money from Luny to his own sister Amelia, who had married a tyrant, but fled when he was interrupted in the act by Guy. As he left, he saw Luny and Guy struggling among the logs in the river. He saved Guy, but Luny died that night, after willing his money to Guy and Log. King Log went to New York and married Lucy, but she died of consumption two months later. He then returned to the camp, became the owner, and was now paying for the education of Guy. In this story, despite its faults, there is evidence that Miss Woolson's knowledge of people in the lake region extended beyond the settlements and summer hotels. King Log and his companions are not entirely authentic or convincing, but at least they are not mere types, like the figures in the preceding stories of this group. As early as 1873 Miss Woolson was beginning to search for characters who more nearly than the tourists represented the inhabitants of the lake country. "Ballast Island," 3 0 the fifth tale of the lower lakes, contains much description of Lake Erie and of those Wine Isw Appletoris Journal (January 18, 1873), I X , 97-101. so Ibid. (June s8, 1873), I X , 833-39.

T H E L A K E C O U N T R Y WRITINGS

29

lands already considered in a magazine article. T h e central figures are Elizabeth Pyne and the Rev. Frederick Harper, an Episcopal clergyman. Elizabeth, in a pique, rowed away from her lover in a skiff and was caught in a September equinoctial. She was cast ashore on Ballast Island, where Miss Jonah, the solitary lighthouse keeper, cared for her. Frederick followed and was also given lodging by Miss Jonah, who now played the role of matchmaker. She told the story of her own sad life in the South and exacted from the lovers a promise to bury her so that she would be "clean forgotten." After their marriage at Lakeport, Elizabeth and Frederick returned soon to fulfil their promise. This tale, like a number of Miss Woolson's early narratives, is merely a sentimental romance, of interest only because it leads to something better. In "St. Clair Flats," 3 1 the next story of this group, Miss Woolson displays that same new power which was to evidence itself in those tales of Lake Superior and of Mackinac written only a little later. She treats, in this narrative, a scene already made familiar to the public in her travel sketches. T h e narrator (a man) and his friend Raymond visit, in September 1855, the flats of the St. Clair River, near Detroit. In this vast marsh of reeds, flags, lily-pads, and water, they disembark at the lighthouse and inquire the way to the house of Waiting Samuel, a local prophet. They follow a tortuous passage that leads finally to their destination. Waiting Samuel, who is a religious fanatic, requires them to keep their dog on another island, and insists that they observe all his queer rites while they remain his guests. Roxana, Samuel's wife, tells them the strange story of her life: how she came from Maine, loved and married the sailor Samuel, bore and buried a baby, and spent years in going from place to place following the visions of her husband, who was now waiting for the thousand years of peace which he believed imminent. T h e loneliness of her life is broken only by an occasional trip to the mainland to sell fish and butter and to visit, on the way, the family of the lighthouse keeper. In 1870 the author returns to the scene Appleton's Journal (October 4, 1873), X , 419-26.

3o

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

only to find a canal through the beautiful flats and the house of Waiting Samuel deserted. A quotation from Bret Harte's "Melons," as well as the nature of the story itself, indicates that Miss Woolson was greatly indebted to the California romancer for her use of remote scenes as a background for unusual characters. In the amusing "Story of Huron Grand Harbor," 3 2 the seventh tale of the lower lakes, the passengers of the vessel Chippewa (Margaret Morris' boat) are forced to seek refuge in Huron Grand Harbor when the craft springs a leak. T h e r e they put up at the International Hotel, of which the owner, "General" Gouverneur Abercrombie, has given a magnificent advance notice. In reality, the hotel is a poorly constructed frame structure, containing only three chairs, which the landlord dexterously moves about to give the impression of luxury. T h e town, of which Abercrombie speaks so proudly, exists only in his imagination. A romance is the indirect result of the fire that breaks out that night and destroys the hotel. Before departing, the members of the party buy seventy-five dollars' worth of lots in the town as a gesture of sympathy towards their landlord. Twelve years later, the now happily married couple of the story read a grandiloquent newspaper account of the Harbor. T h e humor of the tale is enhanced by the reader's recognition of the similarity of the tactics used by the ineffectual "General" to those employed by the present-day realtor in his efforts to sell land in distant and hopefully developed suburbs. T h e story is not a great one, but it is a pleasant example of Miss Woolson's keen sense of humor. T h e eighth and last story of the lower lakes, "Raspberry Island," 3 3 λν85 written several years after Miss Woolson had taken up her residence in the South and had begun to rely upon that region as a source of material for short narratives. This story is, therefore, distinctly inferior to some of her earlier tales of the lakes. It is concerned with the experiences Appleton's Journal (April 18, 1874), XI, 484-90. 33 Harper's New Monthly Magazine (October 1877), LV, 737-45. 82

T H E LAKE C O U N T R Y WRITINGS

31

of two school teachers, H e l e n a n d Dora, w h o spend their vacation p i c k i n g raspberries on an island in L a k e Erie. T h e r e they are t h r o w n i n t o close contact w i t h fifty o t h e r girls of all types e x c e p t the Irish; " t h e M a l o n e y a n d M ' G u i r e elem e n t was absent." T h e a t t i t u d e of condescension represented by this statement applies also to the M e t h o d i s t girls in the c a m p , w h o m the E p i s c o p a l i a n school teachers (representing the o p i n i o n of the a u t h o r herself) regard as of a s o m e w h a t l o w e r species. H e l e n a n d D o r a b e c o m e interested in a workm a n w h o proves to be W i l l i a m M u r d o c k , an escaped convict. T h e l o n g a r m of c i r c u m s t a n c e very g e n e r o u s l y b r i n g s a b o u t a h a p p y e n d i n g in this tale in a m a n n e r that Miss W o o l s o n was o r d i n a r i l y too honest in h e r art to e m p l o y . B u t b y 1877, the year i n w h i c h this story a p p e a r e d , it was e v i d e n t to the a u t h o r that she had v i r t u a l l y e x h a u s t e d the possibilities o f the G r e a t Lakes as a setting for short fiction. W i s e l y , theref o r e , she t u r n e d to fresh scenes for h e r materials, r e a l i z i n g that n e w regions must replace the o l d , if the n o v e l t y of unf a m i l i a r setting was to b e m a i n t a i n e d . T h e first of Miss W o o l s o n ' s f o u r stories laid in t h e lowlands of n o r t h c e n t r a l

Ohio—"Solomon"

34—appeared

in

O c t o b e r 1873, just e i g h t e e n m o n t h s a f t e r she h a d b e g u n to write

fiction.

T h a t her w o r k s h o u l d so soon h a v e b e e n ac-

c e p t e d by the l e a d i n g m o n t h l y p e r i o d i c a l is in itself a m a r k of n o t a b l e progress. A n d there is n o d o u b t that t h e story d e s e r v e d this r e c o g n i t i o n . A letter

86

w r i t t e n just a f t e r t h e

a p p e a r a n c e of " S o l o m o n " contains Miss W o o l s o n ' s o w n intere s t i n g c o m m e n t o n the literary m e t h o d r e p r e s e n t e d b y this tale: I have taken (within the last year) a new departure in my writing. I have gone back to nature and exact reality. I have such a horror of "pretty," "sweet" writing that I should almost prefer a style that was ugly and bitter, provided it was also strong. T h e scene of t h e n a r r a t i v e is t h e eastern O h i o coal c o u n t r y , 34 Atlantic Monthly, X X X I I , 413-24. 85 See Benedict, II, 11.

32

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

in the "Happy Valley" of Miss Woolson's first sketch. T h e narrator, Dora, and her friend, Erminia Stuart, are visiting in the German community, and on one of their walks discover a sulphur spring at the home of Solomon Bangs. His wife Dorcas, a pathetic woman and not a member of the Zoarites, tells them how Solomon's is the soul of an artist and how he had in his youth admired her in preference to the peasant girls of the village. However, he had not made a commercial success of his art and had returned to Tuscarawas County as a miner. On their second visit to the Bangs home, Dora and Erminia are prevented by a storm from leaving, and Dorcas Bangs sends Roarer (Tuscarora), Sol's dog, with a note saying that the ladies have accepted the hospitality of his house. T h a t evening Erminia, who is a student of painting, shows Solomon some of the mechanical principles of drawing. Several days after their departure they learn that Solomon has been fatally injured in the mine. T h e y hurry to his bedside and find that on the previous night he had made a beautiful charcoal sketch of Dorcas as he saw her in his youth. T h r e e months later Dorcas, just before her death, gives to the ladies the sketch which Solomon had made. T h e r e are in this plain tale a sympathy of character protrayal and a distinction of style not present in those stories of the other groups written during the previous eighteen months. Solomon, the thwarted genius, and Dorcas, his forlorn and disappointed wife, impress the reader with a reality that is not characteristic of the puppets of the earlier tales. These simple people use a colloquial speech that sounds like the language of real life, in sharp contrast to the stilted dialogue of the prentice work. T h e background of the uncultivated and remote community is not a mere appendage and stage effect, as was the case in the early romances, b u t is in itself an important influence in preventing the development of the gifted Solomon and his wife. Miss Woolson had learned by this time that local color is not in itself sufficient, and that setting is important only to the extent that it contributes to shaping the lives of h u m a n beings.

T H E LAKE COUNTRY WRITINGS

33

But in her second Ohio story, " T h e Waldenburg Road," 3 6 Miss Woolson suffered a relapse to her earlier and less effective manner. T h e setting is the Waldenburg Hills in north central Ohio, where Valerie Valois, a school teacher, meets John Nott, whom she had spurned seven years before as too plebeian, in a deserted church of the German Pietists. Angered by his candor about her homeliness and affectation of gentility, she leaves and walks ahead of him along a lonely road. Soon she is stopped and robbed by a hobo, but J o h n arrives on the scene, finds the tramp, and recovers her valuables. At this point Valerie realizes, very opportunely, that she loves her defender. J o h n then contritely promises to learn to appreciate Beethoven, who evidently represents culture, and Valerie agrees to read the newspapers which she formerly disdained. T h e scene of this tale is quite incidental, and it was clearly written solely for the purpose of satisfying a public demand for saccharine romance. In "Wilhelmina," 3 7 the third narrative of this group, Miss Woolson returned again to the Zoarites of Tuscarawas County. It is a tale of the renunciation of love, a theme that had already been suggested in several of the earlier stories and was destined to occur again and again both in the short fiction and in the novels. Gustav, the lover of Wilhelmina, had enlisted in the Union army, along with several of his friends, in defiance of the pacifistic laws of the community. When Gustav returns after the war, he has lost interest in his former sweetheart and has found another girl in Cincinnati. When he leaves Zoar to make his fortune in the world, poor Wilhelmina faints, but succeeds in hiding her love. Later she marries a stodgy baker, a widower with five children, who needs a wife to look after his house. Not long after this unromantic match Wilhelmina dies. A mere summary of the plot does not at all convey the emotional power of this simple tale. T h e author succeeds in communicating most effectively to the reader the sense of loss and frustration felt by the 3« Appleton's Journal (July 4, 1874), XII, 5 - 1 1 . 37 Atlantic Monthly (January 1875), X X X V , 44-55.

34

CONSTANCE FENIMORE

WOOLSON

pathetic girl at the apathy of her erstwhile lover. T h e theme is particularly well suited to Miss Woolson's powers, for she is always fond of exciting the sympathy of the reader for the weak and ineffectual. Possibly some incident in her career— perhaps a love affair of which we have no record—may have inclined her to seek solace by depicting in the lives of others that feeling of irretrievable loss which she felt in her own life. But whatever the cause, and of this it is idle to conjecture, there is no doubt that she had a profound sympathy for thwarted lives and an undoubted faculty for producing a similar attitude in others. Moreover, to arouse such an attitude in the reader an air of reality is essential. Now in this story the characters, though they may not be actual portraits of the citizens of Zoar, resemble those good people so closely as to deceive the keenest observer. A letter 38 of the author provides a rather amusing comment on the realism of "Wilhelmina": So you went to Zoar? Didn't you hear any " m a d " remarks about my " W i l h e l m i n e " ? Some one sent me a N e w Philadelphia paper containing a savage article on " W i l h e l m i n e " based upon the idea that my characters were all from life, and consequently "the leathery w o m a n " was the good Mrs. Beiter, the gardener's wife, etc., etc. Of course the article in the country paper was o£ no consequence, but I was distressed to think that perhaps the Beiters, always good friends of mine, thought so, too. I therefore wrote to Mr. Beiter telling him it was but a fancy sketch.

Fourth among the stories of Ohio and latest of the tales about the lake country, "Matches Morganatic" 39 suggests in its punning title the nature of its plot. Miss Woolson prefaces the tale with a quotation from Much Ado About Nothing, and in two of her characters, Kate Allen and Benton Montgomery, obviously imitates Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedict. Mrs. Beets; Leonora, her daughter, and Kate, her niece; Benton Montgomery, John M'Cook, and Dr. Leander Marie 3

8 To her nephew, Samuel Mather. See Benedict, II, 22. 3» Harper's New Monthly Magazine (March 1878), LVI, 517-31.

T H E LAKE COUNTRY WRITINGS

35

are spending the summer of 1863 at Jacob Stahlen's farm in Broad County, Ohio, in the coal country. T h e farmers of that section are prosperous, and their houses and barns are well built and highly ornamented in accordance with the taste of the time. Mrs. Betts tries to encourage matches between Leonora and Benton, and between Kate and Dr. Marie. Word comes that General Morgan is in the neighborhood, and the men decide to save Stahlen's valuable horses by hiding them in a secluded glen. T h e girls accompany them and help to sequester the animals. Benton takes Kate to a point from which they can watch Morgan and his men pass. Dr. Marie, meanwhile, proposes marriage to Leonora and is accepted. Morgan captures Benton and Kate and takes them with him to Dazzleton. Kate pleads with the raider not to take Benton south with him, as he had threatened, for the reason that she and Benton are to be married. Morgan falls in with the idea of a marriage, and the ceremony is performed between three and four in the morning before the astonished villagers. M'Cook, defiant, is brought in as a prisoner, but is released upon Kate's request. Morgan's capture follows soon after this incident. Dr. Marie and Leonora are married, and just after the wedding Benton tells Kate of Morgan's escape from the Ohio State Penitentiary. T h e story ends with an exchange of repartee between Kate and Benton, rivals in wit but happy in their marriage. This tale is not a study of the natives of the lake region, in the manner of many of the other lake stories, but is rather an historical romance of the Civil War, lightened by deft wit and made readable by a fast-moving plot. One more story of the lake country—"Castle Nowhere"— yet remains to be considered. By the end of 1874 Miss Woolson, who was then living in the South, had written all of her best lake stories and was ready to bring out a selected edition of her work. This collection was published in the early months of 1875 under the name, Castle Nowhere: LakeCountry Sketches,40 after the title of the story written es 723· Benedict, II (1932), 547548. The Galaxy, X V I I (January 1874), 7 6 85. Appleton's Journal, X I (March 21, 1874), 372. Benedict, I, 235, and I I (1932), 463. Appleton's Journal, X I (April 18, 1874), 484-490. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, X L V I I I (May 1874), 864-870. Appleton's Journal, X I (May 16, 1874), 614-616. Appleton's Journal, X I I (July 4, 1874), 5-11. Appleton's Journal, X I I (July n , 1874), 3 3 - 3 4 . Benedict, I, 236-238, and II ( i 9 3 2 ) ' 45&-462. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, X L I X (September 1874), 579-585. Scribner's Monthly, V I I I (September 1874), 600-610. The Atlantic Monthly, X X X I V (September 1874), 293-305. Appleton's Journal, X I I (September 5, 1874), 289-290. ,8

" T h e Haunting F a c e "

" A Flower of the Snow" "Yellow Jessamine" " T h e Story of Huron Grand H a r b o r " "Misery L a n d i n g " " A Voyage to the Unknown R i v e r " " T h e Waldenburg Road" "Dolores"

"Duets" "Peter the Parson" " T h e Lady of Little Fishing" " A t the Smithy. (Pickens County, South Carolina, 1874.)" " T h e Florida B e a c h "

The Galaxy, X V I I I (October 1874), 4 8 2 483. Benedict, I, 232, and II (1932),

"Indian Summer" "Euterpe in America"

458-459· Appleton's Journal, X I I (October 17, 1874), 500. Benedict, II (1932), 430. Lippincott's Magazine, X I V (November 1874), 627-633.

BIBLIOGRAPHY "Jeannette" "The Old Agency" "Pine-Barrens"

"The Ancient City"

"Matanzas River" " T h e Legend of Maria Sanchez Creek" "Wilhelmina" Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches "Castle Nowhere" "Peter the Parson" "Jeannette" " T h e Old Agency" "Misery Landing" "Solomon" "Wilhelmina" "St. Clair Flats" "The Lady of Little Fishing" "Miss Elisabetha" " T h e French Broad" " U p the Ashley and Cooper" " A Fire in the Forest" " T h e Oklawaha"

185

Scribner's Monthly, IX (December 1874), 232-243. The Galaxy, X V I I I (December 1874), 804-815. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L (December 1874), 66. Benedict, I, 230, and II (1932), 457-458. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L (December 1874), 1-25 (Part I): L (January 1875), 165-185 (Part II). Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L (December 1874), 24. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L (January 1875), 171. The Atlantic Monthly, X X X V (January 1875), 44-55. J . R. Osgood & Company, Boston, 1875; J . Neish 8c Sons, Odessa, Ontario, i8g[?] (under title, Solomon, and other "Lake country" sketches); Harper 8c Brothers, New York, 1899.

Appleton's

Journal,

X I I I (March

13,

1875). 327-334· Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L (April 1875), 617-636. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L I I (December 1875), 1-24. Appleton's Journal, XIV (December 4, l8

75). 7°5-7° 6 · Harper's New Monthly Magazine, (January 1876), 161-179.

LII

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ι86 "Crowder's Cove: A Story of the War" "Old Gardiston" "On a Homely Woman, Dead" "In the Cotton Country" "Tom" " T o George Eliot" "Felipa" " 'Only the man.' " "Forgotten"

Brakes-

" T o Jean Ingelow" "Four-Leaved Clover"

"On the Border" "Mission Endeavor" "The Old Five" "Morris Island" " T w o Women. 1862."

"Rodman the Keeper"

"Sister St. Luke"

Appleton's Journal, XV (March 18, 1876), 357-3 6 2. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L I I (April 1876), 662-674. Harper's Bazar, I X (April 1, 1876), 210. Benedict, III, 630. Appleton's journal, X V (April 29, 1876), 547-551· Appleton's Journal, X V (May 20, 1876), 656. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 79-81. The New Century for Woman, No. 2 (May 20, 1876), 1. Lippincott's Magazine, X V I I (June 1876), 702-713. Appleton's Journal, I n. s. (July 1876), 47-48. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L I I I (July 1876), 216. The New Century for Woman, No. 9 (July 8, 1876), 67. Harper's Bazar, I X (July 8, 1876), 443. Benedict, III, 133-134, and II (1932), 499·

Appleton's Journal, I n. s. (September 1876), 282. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L I I I (November 1876), 886-893. Appleton's Journal, I n. s. (November 1876), 438-446. Appleton's Journal, I n. s. (December 1876), 537. Benedict, III, 225-226. Appleton's Journal, II n. s. (January 1877), 60-67; II n - s · (February 1877), 140-147. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1877, 1890. The Atlantic Monthly, X X X I X (March 1877), 261-277. Benedict, II (1932), 468-494. The Galaxy, X X I I I (April 1877), 489506.

187

BIBLIOGRAPHY [Review of Mercy Philbrick's Choice] "Keller Hill"

Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X X X I X (May 1877), 618. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 64. Appleton's Journal, II η s. (May 1877), 414-421.

"Mizpah. Genesis XXXI. 49." "Barnaby Pass"

Appleton's Journal, II n. s. (June 1877), 539. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 83. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, LV

[Review of That Lass o' Low rie's]

Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, XL (September 1877), 365-

" Ί Tool'"

Appleton's

( J u l y 1877), 2 6 1 - 2 7 1 .

366. B e n e d i c t , II, a n d I I (1932), 67-69.

Journal,

III n. s. (September

1877), 270.

"Raspberry Island. T o l d to me by Dora" [Review of Samuel Brohl et Cie] "Matches Morganatic" "King David"

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, LV (October 1877), 737-745· Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, XL (November 1877), 6 1 7 619. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 65. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, LVI ( M a r c h 1878), 5 1 7 - 5 3 1 ·

Scribner's

Monthly,

XV (April

1878),

781-789.

[Essay — Comparison of Prose and Poetry] [Essay on Farjeon]

[Essay on South Carolina Gentleman]

Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X L I (June 1878), 793. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 70. Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X L I I (July 1878), 114-116. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 70. Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X L I I (August 1878), 245247. B e n e d i c t , I I , a n d I I (1932), 62-63.

" U p in the Blue Ridge" " T o Certain Biographers" "An Intercepted Letter" [Review of Esther Pennefather]

Appleton's

Journal, V n. s. (August 1878),

104-125.

Appleton's

Journal,

V n. s. (September

1878), 376.

Harper's Bazar, XI (September 7, 1878), 578· Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, XLII (October 1878), 502-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

188 " I n Remembrance" " 'Bro' " [Review of Europeans] [Review of L'Idee Jean Teterol]

de

[Review of Europeans] [Review of Far from the Madding Crowd] "Miss Vedder" "Black Point" " T h e South D e v i l " Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches " R o d m a n the Keeper" "Sister St. L u k e " "Miss Elisabetha" " O l d Gardiston" " T h e South D e v i l " " I n the Cotton Country" "Felipa" " 'Bro' " "King David" " U p in the Blue Ridge" "Miss G r i e f "

503. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 65-67. New York Evening Post, October 18, 1878, 2. Appleton's Journal, V n. s. (November 1878), 4 1 7 - 4 2 8 . Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X L I I I (January 1879), 1 0 6 108. Benedict, II, and I I (1932), 56-62. Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X L I I I (February 1879), 2 5 2 254. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 63-64. Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X L I I I (February 1879), 259. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 55-56. Contributors' Club, The Atlantic Monthly, X L I I I (February 1879), 260262. Benedict, II, and I I (1932), 70-74. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L V I I I (March 1879), 590-601. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L I X ( J u n e 1879), 84-97. The Atlantic Monthly, X L V (February 1880), 1 7 3 - 1 9 3 · D. Appleton 8c Company, New York, 1880: H a r p e r Sc Brothers, New York, 1886, 1899.

Lippincott's 574-585·

Magazine, X X V (May 1880),

BIBLIOGRAPHY "A Florentine Experi ment" "The Old Palace Keeper"

Anne

" T h e Roman and a Walk"

May,

"In Venice" " T h e Street of Hyacinth" For the Major

the

'At Mentone"

"Mentone"

East Angels

" A t the Chateau of Corinne"

189

The Atlantic Monthly, X L V I (October 1880), 502-530. Benedict, II, and II (193 2 ). 192-199· The Christian Union, X X I I (November 10, 1880), 394-396, and X X X I V (October 14, 1886), 1 0 - 1 1 . Benedict, II, and II (1932), 199-216. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X I I L X I V (December 1880, to May 1882), 28-863, 68-905, 46-918. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1882, (Biographical edition) 1899, 1910. Sampson Low 8c Company, London, 1883. The Christian Union, X X I V (July 27, 1881), 76-77. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 247-256. The Atlantic Monthly, X L I X (April 1882), 488-505. The Century Magazine, II n. s. (May, June 1882), 134-144, 177-184. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X V L X V I (November 1882, to April 1883), 907-917, 93-764. Harper 8c Brothers, New York, 1883. Sampson Low 8c Company, London, 1883. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X V I I I (January, February 1884), 189-216, 367-391. Benedict, II, and II (1932). 163-177. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X V I I I (January 1884), 216. Benedict, 11, and II (1932), 178. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X L X X I I (January 1885, to May 1886), 246-896, 102-908, 115-968. Harper 8c Brothers, New York, 1886. Sampson Low 8c Company, London, 1886. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X V (October 1887), 778-796. Benedict, II, and II (1932), 228-236.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

90 "Neptune's Shore" " A Pink Villa" " T h e Front Yard" Jupiter

Lights

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X V I I (October 1 8 8 8 ) , 7 6 3 - 7 7 9 . Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X V I I (November 1 8 8 8 ) , 8 3 7 - 8 5 6 . Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X V I I I (December 1 8 8 8 ) , 1 1 9 - 1 3 8 . Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X V I I I - L X X I X (January 1 8 8 9 , to September

1889),

240-958,

114-599.

Harper & Brothers, New York, 1 8 8 9 . Sampson Low 8c Company, London, 1889.

"Cairo in 1 8 9 0 "

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X X I I I (October, November 1 8 9 1 ) , 6 5 1 - 6 7 4 , 8 2 8 - 8 5 5 . Benedict, II, and I I ( · 9 3 2 ) . 344-3 6 3·

"Dorothy"

Harper's New Monthly L X X X I V (March 1 8 9 2 ) ,

"In Sloane Street"

Harper's

Benedict, I I , and I I ( 1 9 3 2 ) ,

Magazine, 551-575. 295-298.

Bazar, X X V (June 1 1 ,

1892),

473-478-

"Corfu and the Ionian Sea"

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X X V (August 1 8 9 2 ) , 3 5 1 - 3 7 0 . Bene-

" A Christmas Party"

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X X V I (December 1 8 9 2 ) , 4 0 - 5 7 . Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X X V I - L X X X V I I (January 1 8 9 3 ,

Horace Chase

dict, II, and II ( 1 9 3 2 ) ,

to August

"A Transplanted Boy"

1893),

307-339.

198-897,

140-770.

Harper 8c Brothers, New York, 1 8 9 4 . Osgood, Mcllvaine &: Company, London, 1 8 9 4 . Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X X V I I I (February 1 8 9 4 ) , 4 2 5 - 4 4 1 . Benedict, I I ( 1 9 3 2 ) ,

500-541.

"A Waitress"

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X X I X (June 1 8 9 4 ) , 8 8 - 1 0 2 . Bene-

The Front Yard and Other Italian Stories

Harper 8c Brothers, New York, 1 8 9 5 .

dict, II, and I I ( 1 9 3 2 ) , 3 0 1 - 3 0 2 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY " T h e Front Yard" "Neptune's Shore" "A Pink Villa" " T h e Street of the Hyacinth" "A Christmas Party" " I n Venice" Dorothy and Other Italian Stories "Dorothy" "A Transplanted Boy" "A Florentine Experiment" "A Waitress" "At the Chateau of Corinne" Mentone, Cairo, and, Corfu

»9»

Harper & Brothers, New York, 1896, 1899.

Harper & Brothers, New York, 1896.

POSTHUMOUS WRITINGS OF MISS WOOLSON RECENTLY PUBLISHED B Y MISS BENEDICT IN

Five Generations,

[REFERRED TO AS 1 , 1 1 , 1 1

III]

Poems " I n Memoriam. G.S.B." "Detroit River" "St. Augustine Light" " 'Gentleman W a i f e ' " "Contrast" "Gettysburg. 1876" "Martins On the Telegraph Wire" "We Shall Meet Them Again" "Alas!" "Plum's Picture" 41

III, 649. II (1932), 417. I, 247. I, 233-234, II (1932), 497-498· (!932), 49®· III, 224-225. II, and I I (1932), 81-82. 11

II (1932), 545-547· II (1932), 495-496. I l l , 650.

(1932),

BIBLIOGRAPHY

192

"Mackinac—Revisited"

I, 2 8 5 - 2 8 6 ;

II

Miscellaneous " A Brief Sketch of the L i f e of Charles Jarvis Woolson" [Letters to friends a n d relatives]

(1932),

Writings

1,94-101.

I, II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) , and III, passim.

[Notes on Books]

II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) , 8 8 - 9 4 .

[Reflections u p o n A r t , Music and Literature] [Thoughts, Maxims, Criticisms and Observations]

II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) , 9 5 - 1 0 8 .

[Subjects, Scenes and Characters for Short Stories] " T h e Villa Medici" " T h e Piazza of St. John's G a t e " [Notes on the Venetian L a g o o n s and the Islands of the Lagoons]

II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) ,

109-124.

II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) ,

125-150.

II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) , 2 5 6 - 2 5 7 . II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) , 2 5 8 - 2 5 9 . II, II ( 1 9 3 2 ) ,

393-411.

BIOGRAPHY OF CONSTANCE FENIMORE

A l d e n , Henry Mills, Harper's 1894),

419.

Weekly,

WOOI.SON

X X X V I I I (February 3 ,

113-114.

A l d e n , Henry Mills, Introduction to Biographical Edition of Anne, H a r p e r 8c Brothers, N e w York, 1 8 9 9 . Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, cd. James G. W i l s o n and J o h n Fiske, D. A p p l e t o n R: C o m p a n y , New York, 1 8 9 4 . VI, 6 1 1 . Athenaeum, The (London), (February 3 , 1 8 9 4 ) , 1 5 0 . Book News, X I (February 1 8 9 3 ) , 2 6 3 - 2 6 4 . Critic, The, X X I V (February 3 , 1 8 9 4 ) , 73-74. Encyclopedia Americana, The, N e w York, 1 9 2 7 . X X I X , 5 0 8 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

193

Harper, J . Henry, The House of Harper, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1912. 486-488. Harper's Bazar, X I X (December 18, 1886), 851. Harper's Weekly, X X X V I I I (February 10, 1894), 130. Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Charles Dudley Warner, J . A. Hill & Company, New York. X X V I I , 16165-16166. Literary World, The, XIV, 327. Nezu York Times, January 27, 1894, p. 10. New York World, January 28, 1894. Sangster, Margaret E., Harper's Bazar, X X V I I (February 3, 1894), 93-94· Spofford, Charles B., Grave Stone Records From the Ancient Cemeteries in the town of Claremont, New Hampshire, Claremont, Ν. H., 1896. 42. Stedman, Arthur, The Book-Buyer, VI (October 1889), 309-311. Waite, Otis F. R „ History of Claremont, Manchester, Ν. H., 1895. 500. Selected General Criticism Harper, J . Henry, The House of Harper, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1912. 225-226; 484-488. Harris, May, The Saturday Review of Literature, VI (December 2i. 1929). 59°· James, Henry, "Miss Constance Fenimore Woolson," Harper's Weekly, X X X I (February 12, 1887), 1 1 4 - 1 1 5 . Reprinted in Partial Portraits, Macmillan & Company, London, 1888, 1894· i 7 5 - I 9 2 · James, The Letters of Henry, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1920. I, 105. Pattee, Fred Lewis, The Cambridge History of American Literature, 4 vols., G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1918. II, 381-382. Pattee, Fred Lewis, The Development of the American Short Story, Harper 8c Brothers, New York, 1923. 250-255, 332; bibliography, 264. Wickham, Gertrude Van R., "Dogs of Noted Americans," St. Nicholas, XV, Part 2 (June 1888), 597-598. Selected Special Critic ism Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches Appleton's Journal, X I I I (April 3, 1875), 438-439.

194

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Atlantic Monthly, X X X V (June 1875), 736-737. Anne The Century Magazine, n. s. II (August 1882), 635-636. The Churchman, July 15, 1882, p. 70. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X V (August 1882), 478. Lippincott's Magazine, X X X (August 1882), 215. The Literary World, X I I I (July 15, 1882), 227. Our Continent, II (September 6, 1882), 285. Scudder, Horace E., The Atlantic Monthly, L (July 1882), 1 1 1 113. Wallace, William, The Academy (London), X X I V (July 21, 1883), 42. For the Major Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X V I I (July 1883), 316-317. The Saturday Review of Literature, VI (October 12, 1929), 268. Scudder, Horace E., The Atlantic Monthly, L I I (July 1883), 119-120. Spectator (London), L V I (August 25, 1883), 1100. East Angels Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X I I I (August 1886), 477. The Literary World, X V I I (July 24, 1886), 243. Saintsbury, George, The Academy (London), X X X (July 31, 1886), 69. Scudder, Horace E., The Atlantic Monthly, L I X (February 1887), 267-268. Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X I V (April 1887), 482. Jupiter Lights Saintsbury, George, The Academy (London), X X X V I I (February 1, 1890), 77. Horace Chase Cotterell, George, The Academy (London), X L V (May 26, 1894), 434·

Index "Alas!" 108. Alden, Henry Μ., 44, 92. Aldrich, Thomas B., 2. "American Cities—Detroit," 12. "Ancient City, The," 56-57, 78, 90. Anne, 9, 10, 11, 39-45, 48, 89, 165, 175, 176. Arnold, Matthew, 106, 170-171. "At Mentone," 133-134. "At the Chäteau of Corinne," 140-141. "At the Smithy," 78, 175. "Ballast Island," 28-29. "Barnaby Pass," 66-67. Benedict, Clara Woolson, 5, 6, 46, 47, 49. 5 ' · 52. 54. >°3. >09· « " . « ο . »6*· Benedict, Clare, 108. Benedict, George Α., 6, 46-47. Benedict, George S., 103. Benedicts Abroad, The, see Bibliography. Biddle family, relation of to Anne, 40 n. "Black Point," 64-63. "Bones of our Ancestors, The," 7 n, 102. "Brief Sketch of C. J. Woolson, A," 3 η. "Bro," 69-70. Browning, Robert, 106. Carlyle, Thomas, 85. "Castle Nowhere," 35-36. Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches, 35-36, 61, 177. Chandler, David, 3. Chandler, Hannah, 3. "Charles Dickens. Christmas, 1870," 103. "Christmas Party, A," 152-153. "Cicely's Christmas," 98.

"Cleopatra," 103. "Commonplace," 106. "Complaint of Pete Trone, Esq.," 105. Constance Fenimore Woolson, 46, see Bibliography. "Contrast," 80. Cooper family, genealogy of, 3 n. Cooper, James Fenimore, 3, 4, 12, 23, 27, 49, 114, 139, 156. "Corfu and the Ionian Sea," 144-145. "Corn Fields," 38. "Crowder's Cove," 65-66. "Day of Mystery, A," 98. Deafness of Miss Woolson, 151-152. Death of Miss Woolson, 159-162. Dix, Gen. John Α., η. "Dolores," 77-78, 175. "Dorothy," 148-149. Dorothy and Other Italian Stories, 162, 178. Dreiser, Theodore, 73, 95. "Duets," 98. East Angels, 85-90, 96, 161, 175, 176. Eggleston, Edward, 2. Essays, miscellaneous critical, 169-170. Esther Pennefather, criticism of, 168. Europeans, The, criticism of, 168-169. "Euterpe in America," 102. "Extremities. T h e Feet," 101. "Extremities. T h e Head and Hands," 101. "Fairy Island," 10, η-12, 22, 47. Far From the Madding Crowd, criticism of, 169. "February," 104. "Felipa," 61, 177. "Fire in the Forest, A," 38-39.

ig6

INDEX

Five Generations, 102, see Bibliography. " F l o a t i n g . Otsego Lake, September, 1872," 103-104. " F l o r e n t i n e Experiment, A , " 1 1 7 - 1 1 8 . " F l o r i d a Beach, T h e , " 78. Florida, stories of, 60-65. " F l o w e r of the Snow, A , " 22-23. " F o r g o t t e n , " 106. For the Major, 80-85, 90, 1 1 3 , 125, 175, 176. " F o u r - L e a v e d Clover," 104. " F r e n c h Broad, T h e , " 57-58. " F r o n t Yard, T h e , " 142-143, 177. Front Yard and Other Italian Stories, The, 164, 177. Fuller, Margaret, 106. " G e n t l e m a n W a i f e , " 105. " G e t t y s b u r g . 1876," 54, 108. Glasgow, Ellen, 85. "Greatest of All is Charity, T h e , " 106. G u i l f o r d , Miss, 5, 6. " H a p p y Valley, T h e , " 1 0 - 1 1 , 32, 47. H a r d y , T h o m a s , 16g. Harte, Bret, 2, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19, 30. " H a u n t e d Lake, T h e , " 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 . " H a u n t i n g Face, T h e , " 104. " H e a r t of J u n e , T h e , " 104. " H e l i o t r o p e , " 104. " H e r a l d ' s Cry, T h e , " 103. " H e r o Worship," 106. " H i a w a t h a , " 6. Hoosier School-Master, 2. Horace Chase, 92-96, 146, 156, 176. Howells, William D „ 1, 2, 10.

" I n Venice," 128-129. " I T o o ! " 105. Jackson, Helen Hunt, 2. J a m e s , Henry, 1, 2, 84. 86,

115-116,

" 7 . 130. ' 3 5 · '4». "49· l 6 8 · '69· "78. " J e a n n e t t e , " 24-26, 177. Jefferson, T h o m a s , 3. " J u n e Lyric, A , " 105. " J u n e Rhapsody, A , " 105. Jupiter Lights, 9, 45, 90-92, 143, 176. " K e l l e r H i l l , " 99. " K e n t u c k y B e l l e , " 38, 175. " K i n g D a v i d , " 75. " K i n g L o g , " 28. " L a d y of Little Fishing, T h e , " 17-18, 19, 62, 177. L a k e country, travel sketches of, 1015; stories of, 15-36; verse of, 36-39; novels of, 39-45. " L a k e Erie in September," 38. "Lakeshore Relics," 15. Lakes, lower, stories of, 16, 26-31. Lake Superior, stories of, 16-22. L a n d o r , Walter Savage, criticism of, 171. " L e g e n d of Maria Sanchez Creek, T h e , " 79. I.'ldee de Jean Teterol, criticism of, 169. " L i l y and D i a m o n d , " 27-28. Longfellow, Henry W „ 15. " L o n g i n g , " 38. " L o v e Unexpressed," 104. " L u c k of R o a r i n g Camp, T h e , " 2, 17, >77·

" I d e a l ( T h e Artist Speaks.)," 106. " I n d i a n Summer," 104. " I n Memoriam. G . S. B . , " 103. " I n R e m e m b r a n c e , " 103. " I n Search of the Picturesque," 12. " I n Sloane Street," 149-150, 178. "Intercepted Letter, A n , " 107. " I n the Cotton Country," 72-73, 74, 177.

Luck of Roaring Stories, The, 9.

Camj> and

Other

" M a c k i n a c Island," 14. Mackinac Island, stories of, 16, 22-26, 35-36. "Mackinac—Revisited," 39. " M a r c h , " 38. "Margaret Morris," 26-27.

INDEX "Martins on the Telegraph Wires," 108. "Matanzas River," 78. "Matches Morganatic," 34-35. "Memory," 104. "Mentone," 134. Mentone, Cairo and Corfu, 162. Mercy Philbrick's Choice, criticism of, 166-167. "Merry Christmas, A," 98. "Misery Landing," 16-17. "Miss Elisabetha," 60-61, 177. "Miss Grief," 116-117, '49· '62. 178. "Mission Endeavor," 20-21, 162. "Miss Vedder," 70. "Mizpah. Genesis XXXI. 49," 104105. Montague, Henry J., 103. "Morris Island," 79. Morris, William, criticism of, 171. Murfree, Mary Noailles, 65, 67, 68. "Neptune's Shore," 141. New York, description of, in letters, 46-47. Notebooks of Miss Woolson, 172-173. Notes on Lagoons of Venice, 164. "October Idyl, An," 98. "October's Song," 104. "Ode to Chicago," 105. "Off Thunder Bay," 37. Ohio, north central, stories of, 16, 3135· "Oklawaha, The," 59. "Old Agency, The," 24, 177. "Old Five, The," 21-22. "Old Gardiston," 71-72. "Old Palace Keeper, The," 117, 119120. Old Stone House, The, 99-101, 105, »75· "On a Homely Woman, Dead," 103. "One Versus Two," 22. " O n l y the Brakesman,' " 107. "On the Border," 79. "On the Iron Mountain," 16.

197

Pathfinder, The, 12. Peabody, Hannah, 3. "Peter the Parson," 19-20. "Piazza of St. John's Gate, The," 125126. "Pine-Barrens," 78. "Pink Villa, A," 141-142. Pioneers, The, 23. Piret, Father A. D., 10, 23, 24, 41, 42. "Plum's Picture," 103. Pomeroy, Ann Cooper, 3, 4. Pomeroy, George, 4. "Raspberry Island," 30-31. Reconstruction, stories of, 70-75. Return of the Native, The, 90. "Rodman the Keeper," 73-74, 177. Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches, 47- 75-77. >77· Roe, E. P., 2. "Roman May, and a Walk, The," 125. "Round by Propeller," 13. Ruskin, John, 116, 170. "Sail-Rock, Lake Superior," 37, 175. Samuel Brohl et Cie, criticism of, 167-168. Schoolcraft, Henry, 24. Scudder, Horace E., 43-44. "Sister St. Luke," 61-62, 177. "Solomon," 31-32, 177. "South Devil, The," 63-65, 177. South, travel sketches of the, 56-59; stories of the, 59-77; verse of the, 77-80; novels of the, 80-96. "Spots," 7 n, 101. "St. Augustine Light," 80. "St. Clair Flats," 29-30, 103. Stedman, Arthur, 4, 6. "Story of Huron Grand Harbor," 30. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 2. "Street of the Hyacinth, The," 130, 177. Tennyson, Alfred, 106. That Lass o' Lowrie's, criticism of, .67. " T o Certain Biographers," 107.

INDEX

ig8 " T o G e o r g e E l i o t , " 103.

" W a l p u r g i s N i g h t , " 37-38.

" T o J e a n I n g e l o w , " 103.

" W e i g h e d in t h e B a l a n c e , " 27.

"Tom,"

" W e Shall Meet T h e m A g a i n , " 108.

Tom

105.

Sawyer,

80.

W i c k h a m , G e r t r u d e Van R., 100.

" T r a n s p l a n t e d B o y , A , " 162-163, 178.

" W i l h e l m i n a , " 33-34, 177.

" T w o W a y s , " 106.

" W i n e Islands of L a k e Erie, T h e , " 14.

" T w o W o m e n : 1862," 79.

W o o l son, A n n C o o p e r , 4.

" U p in t h e B l u e R i d g e , " 67-68.

W o o l s o n , C h a r l e y , 5.

" U p t h e A s h l e y a n d C o o p e r , " 58.

W o o l s o n , C l a r a , see Benedict.

W o o l s o n , C h a r l e s Jarvis, 3, 4, 4G.

W o o l s o n f a m i l y , genealogy of, 3 n. I'oices Out of the Past, 46, see B i b l i o g raphy. " V o y a g e to t h e U n k n o w n R i v e r , A , " 56, 105.

W o o l s o n , G e r t r u d e Elizabeth, 4. W o o l s o n , H a n n a h Pomeroy, 3, 4, 46, 47. 48. 49- 5 ° . 52. 53· 54W o o l s o n , J u l i a C a m p b e l l , 4. W o o l s o n , T h o m a s , 3.

" W a i t r e s s , A , " 163-164. " W a l d e n b u r g R o a d , T h e , " 33.

" Y e l l o w Jessamine," 77