Chapter 15

of this book.

_The Making of the Western Mind_, by F. MELIAN STAWELL and F. S. MARVIN. A short survey of the leading elements of the European cultural inheritance from the days of classical Greece to our own day.

_Suggestion and Mental Analysis_, by WILLIAM BROWN. Takes into account Coué and Badouin and psychoanalysis, and culminates in an exposition of Bergson’s philosophy.

_The Dominant Sex_, by MATHILDE and MATHIAS VAERTING, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. Argues that there are no distinctively “masculine” traits but that the traits so-called have been characteristic of either sex when dominant in a particular society; with evidence to support the theory.

_The Mechanism and Physiology of Sex Determination_, by RICHARD GOLDSCHMIDT, translated by W. J. Dakin. Remarkable breeding experiments carried out with insects; intersexuality; a subsection deals with man. A book of importance to biologists.

_How to Sing_, by LUISA TETRAZZINI. Practical advice by the great coloratura singer.

_The Art of the Prima Donna_, by FREDERICK H. MARTENS. Discussions by Bori, Calve, Easton, Farrar, Galli-Curci, Hempel, Homer, Jeritza, Schumann-Heink and others are the feature of the book.

_Public Speaking_, by FRANK H. KIRKPATRICK. Those interested in this subject will probably want also ALFRED DWIGHT SHEFFIELD’S _Joining in Public Discussion_.

_The Process and Practice of Photo-Engraving_, by H. O. GROESBECK, JR. There has hitherto been no handbook and manual.

_Construction of the Small House_, by H. VANDERVOORT WALSH. For the architect and the layman alike.

As an example of the finest type of book in one of many special fields, there may be mentioned ARTHUR T. BOLTON’S _The Architecture of Robert and James Adam_, in two volumes with about 700 illustrations, folio size, $60.00.

_The Book of Building and Interior Decorating_, edited by REGINALD T. TOWNSEND. Practical advice from experts.

_Interior Decoration_, by FRANK ALVAH PARSONS. A standard work.

_The Psychology of Dress: Life Expressed in Clothes_, by FRANK ALVAH PARSONS, is a history of costume made still more interesting by illustrations.

The Amateur’s Book of the Garden Series, edited by LEONARD BARRON, offers:

_The Vegetable Garden_, by ADOLPH KRUHM _Planning Your Garden_, by W. S. ROGERS _Lawns_, by LEONARD BARRON _House Plants_, by PARKER T. BARNES _The Flower Garden_, by IDA D. BENNETT

For the owner of the greenhouse there is _Gardening Under Glass_, by F. F. ROCKWELL; SYDNEY MITCHELL’S _Gardening in California_ is a guide for the amateur on the Pacific slope; and _Adventures in My Garden and Rock Garden_, by LOUISE BEEBE WILDER (author of _My Garden_ and _Colour in My Garden_) is the descriptive history of a piece of land hardly more than an acre in size.

_The Plain Sailing Cook Book_, by SUSANNA SHANKLIN BROWNE. Simple recipes for beginners.

_A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House_, by JESSIE CONRAD. With a preface by her husband, Joseph Conrad. This was the meat on which our Cæsar fed and grew so great.

_A Pocket Bridge Book_, by WALTER CAMP. For those who must have their daily dummy.

_Modern Auction, 1923_, by GRACE G. MONTGOMERY. The new edition of a standard work.

_Singles and Doubles_, by W. T. TILDEN, 2D., world’s tennis champion, 1920, 1921.

_The Gist of Golf_, by HARRY VARDON. Vardon writes most readably and gives a chapter to each club. Pictures.

_Field Soccer and Hockey for Women_, by HELEN FROST and HAZEL J. CUBBERLEY. Pictures and diagrams.

_Ski-ing Turns_, by VIVIAN CAULFIELD. With card diagrams that can be removed from the book.

_How to Box_, by NORMAN CLARK. With 61 photographs.

_Training for Power and Leadership_, by GRENVILLE KLEISER.

_The Making of an Executive_, by A. HAMILTON CHURCH. Personal qualifications and the special knowledge required.

_Creative Selling_, by CHARLES HENRY MACKINTOSH. Making and keeping customers.

_The Law of Sales_, by JAMES BURTON READ. The law relating to the transfer of personal property for considerations.

_Advertising for the Retailer_, by LLOYD DALLAS HERROLD. Complete information on every type of advertising used by the retailer. Illustrations of layouts, window decorations, show cards, letters, etc.

_The Leadership of Advertised Brands_, by GEORGE BURTON HOTCHKISS and RICHARD B. FRANKEN. Successful advertising and marketing methods.

EDWARD H. SCHULZE’S _Making Letters Pay_ covers business letters from the viewpoint of “better results, in less time, at lower cost”; while CARL A. NAETHER’S _The Business Letter_ offers thoroughgoing practice in making good business letters a habit. SALLIE B. TANNAHILL’S _Ps and Qs: A Book on the Art of Letter Arrangement_ is concerned with personal letters.

_Funds and Their Uses_, by FREDERICK A. CLEVELAND. Now available in a revised edition. Methods, instruments and institutions of modern financial transactions. The revision adds chapters on the United States Treasury, commercial banks, the Federal Reserve system, trust companies, investment bankers and agricultural credit institutions.

_Cotton and the Cotton Market_, by W. HUSTACE HUBBARD. Production, marketing, the future contract system, the speculative factor; a pretty complete survey.

_Reminiscences of a Stock Operator_, by EDWIN LEFEVRE. The chief appeal of this book is the appeal of fiction, although it is obviously founded on the facts of one or more Wall Street careers. Much market wisdom.

_Co-operative Marketing_, by HERMAN STEEN.

_Historic Textile Fabrics_, by RICHARD GLAZIER. More than 200 varieties are illustrated.

_The Business of Writing_, by ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY and ALEXANDER VAN RENSSELAER. A trustworthy book on marketing the writer’s product.

_Writing to Sell_, by EDWIN WILDMAN. What will be marketable and why, from short pieces for household periodicals to special feature articles for monthly magazines.

_The Community Newspaper_, by EMERSON P. HARRIS and FLORENCE HARRIS HOOKE. Developing the newspaper to the community’s benefit and the owners’ profit.

Readers interested in the subject of JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON’S _The Humanizing of Knowledge_ will be interested in ABRAHAM FLEXNER’S new book, _A Modern College and a Modern School_.

_Modern Industrialism_, by FRANK L. MCVEY, presents in very full outline and from the examples of many countries present-day industrial organisation.

_Trade Unionism in the United States_, by ROBERT F. HOXIE. A revised edition is ready.

_Everybody’s Business_, by FLOYD PARSONS. A readable survey of America’s natural resources and the story of the development of our major industries.

_The Great Game of Politics_, by FRANK R. KENT.

_Too Much Government--Too Much Taxation_, by CHARLES NORMAN FAY.

* * * * *

NOTE: The list of every publishing house has its special characteristics and the reader of books will naturally associate certain types of books with certain imprints; it is desirable that he should, aiding the bookseller, when possible, in the quest for publications of a special sort. I have tried to name below, as a general guide supplementing the fragmentary list above, the chief types of publications of the four houses associated in the production of this book:

D. Appleton & Company, whose long history has given them the honour of publishing important works by Charles Darwin, Haeckel, Froebel, Thomas Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Max Nordau, G. Stanley Hall, Muensterberg, Flammarion, Florence Nightingale and L. Emmett Holt, publish many scientific, business, educational, technical and industrial books, military and naval textbooks; books on the Spanish language and many translations into Spanish from English, including fiction; medical books; fiction by Zona Gale, Joseph C. Lincoln, Harold Bell Wright, Edith Wharton, Brand Whitlock, etc., and general literature.

George H. Doran Company publish many books of historical importance, memoirs, biographies, etc.; contemporary politics; travel; sport; belles lettres; a very large list of religious books; spiritualistic books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and others; poetry; plays; and a remarkable fiction list including Walpole, Mary Roberts Rinehart, W. Somerset Maugham, Arnold Bennett, etc.

Doubleday, Page & Company are noted as the publishers of many garden and nature books; of important biographies and historical works; travel; poetry; belles lettres; general literature and fiction by Joseph Conrad, Booth Tarkington, Gene Stratton-Porter, Edna Ferber, Kathleen Norris, etc. They publish the works of Rudyard Kipling (except the Outward Bound Edition: Scribner).

Charles Scribner’s Sons publish works on architecture; historical and biographical books and memoirs; letters; belles lettres; books dealing with problems of race and society; sociological works; poetry; plays; books on sports; works on art and decoration, philosophy and religion; many books illustrated in colour; and fiction. In a long career the house has had the distinction of publishing the works of J. M. Barrie, Thomas Carlyle, Edmund Gosse, W. E. Henley, Maurice Hewlett, James Huneker, Henrik Ibsen, Henry James, George Meredith, Theodore Roosevelt, George Santayana, Robert Louis Stevenson, etc.

All four houses publish books for boys and girls.

Fiction.

In addition to the fiction already discussed attention may be invited to the following new and recent books (for new fiction by Galsworthy, Conrad, V. Sackville West, Arthur Train, Harold Bell Wright, Ralph Connor, Booth Tarkington, Zona Gale, Gene Stratton-Porter, Joseph C. Lincoln, Edith Wharton, Christopher Morley see respective chapters on these authors; also see Chapters 3, 15, and 18):

_Cross-Sections_, by JULIAN STREET. Short stories.

_Butterfly_, by KATHLEEN NORRIS.

_Rufus_, by GRACE S. RICHMOND.

_Miss Bracegirdle and Others_, by STACY AUMONIER. Short stories.

_The Motherless_, by BENGT BERG, translated by Charles Wharton Stork. The story of a motherless boy and a motherless bear cub.

_The Shadowy Third_, by ELLEN GLASGOW. Short stories.

_The Middle Father_, by ANTHONY M. RUD. Norwegian settlers in the Middle West.

_Conquistador_, by KATHARINE FULLERTON Gerould.

_The Orissers_, by L. H. MYERS.

_Four of a Kind_, by J. P. MARQUAND. Four little novels.

_The Love Legend_, by WOODWARD BOYD.

_The Marriage Verdict_, by FRANK H. SPEARMAN.

_The Really Romantic Age_, by L. ALLEN HARKER.

_Broken Barriers_, by MEREDITH NICHOLSON.

_Timber Wolf_, by JACKSON GREGORY.

_Colin_, by E. F. BENSON.

_Eris_, by ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.

_Pandora Lifts the Lid_, by CHRISTOPHER MORLEY and DON MARQUIS.

_The House of Helen_, by CORRA HARRIS.

_The Gay Year_, by DOROTHY SPEARE.

_The Middle of the Road_, by SIR PHILIP GIBBS.

_La Parcelle 32_, by ERNEST PEROCHON.

_North of 36_, by EMERSON HOUGH.

_Fires of Ambition_, by GEORGE GIBBS.

_Madame Claire_, by SUSAN ERTZ.

_Corduroy_, by RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL.

_The Public Square_, by WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT.

_The Ground Swell_, by ALFRED B. STANFORD.

_The Song of the Dragon_, by JOHN TAINTOR FOOTE. Short stories.

_12. Totalling Mr. Tarkington_

i

In the interesting procession of his work, Booth Tarkington has pretty well paralleled the somewhat vacillating development of popular literary taste in his country. This, there is every reason to believe, has resulted from no conscious intention. The fashion, in considering Mr. Tarkington, has usually been to contrast what are called his two natures--the romanticist who wrote _Monsieur Beaucaire_ and the realist (more or less) who wrote _The Gentleman From Indiana_ and _The Turmoil_. Very sensibly has it been pointed out that the two strains are manifest side by side in a number of his novels, such as _The Conquest of Canaan_, where the realism of character is sadly impaled on the rocks of plot. But, if I may advance the idea with due diffidence, such as Tarkington always shows in any discussion of his work, the much more instructive comparison lies deeper in the man and is the result of an unrelenting pressure of environment on a personality endowed with most exceptional talent and even unmistakable genius. One can say, I think, although with a great deal of hesitation over its unavoidable crudeness, that Mr. Tarkington in some sense repeats what Mr. Van Wyck Brooks conceives to be the tragedy of Mark Twain, only in Tarkington’s case it has no air of tragedy. The common view of the author of _Alice Adams_ is that he is a lucky fellow who deserves all his luck. Only in a narrow, godlike perspective would he appear tragic. And such a conclusion might easily be premature. When _Monsieur Beaucaire_ appeared Mr. Frederic Taber Cooper declared it certain that we knew the extent of the author’s capabilities, adding that it was unthinkable that he should ever again essay the realism of _The Gentleman From Indiana_. A couple of years ago plenty of persons qualified to have and to express an opinion asserted that Tarkington would never overcome his propensity toward a pulled-together and “happy” ending in a novel; and in the same year appeared _Alice Adams_. As Mr. Tarkington is only fifty-four, and may easily have a dozen years and a half a dozen prime novels directly in front of him, to be dogmatic is to run a perfectly unreasonable risk of stultification. I shall try to avoid that.

ii

“An unrelenting pressure of environment on a personality endowed with most exceptional talent....”

[Illustration: BOOTH TARKINGTON]

Newton Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, 29 July 1869, the son of John Stevenson Tarkington (died 1922, aged ninety) and Elizabeth (Booth) Tarkington. The father, a Civil War soldier and a lawyer, was for some years in politics; the son was a member of the Indiana Legislature in 1902-3. The mother’s family is not traceably connected with those Booths celebrated as actors. In his study of _Booth Tarkington_ which is and will for a long time remain the chief resource and delight of those considering the novelist, Robert Cortes Holliday points out that the Indianapolis of Booth Tarkington’s youth was a town, and that B. T. is neither a city nor a country boy, but a town boy. For a while in his childhood the boy was affected by nervous disorders resembling St. Vitus attacks. At about the age of eleven, he became a friend of James Whitcomb Riley, who was a neighbour. In his teens, Tarkington had the behaviour of a normal boy and a spirit of deviltry showed itself that was to last him until he was thirty. He went to Phillips Exeter, then to Purdue University, and finally to Princeton, where he “made” Ivy, than which, in the way of social success, Princeton offers nothing more beautiful. Much on the sentimental side is made to this day of Tarkington’s singing of “Danny Deever” at class gatherings and reunions. After leaving Princeton, Tarkington returned to Indianapolis and pursued the busy social life possible to a young man of the town while at the same time he read a good deal and tried various styles of writing. Mr. Holliday intimates that, like Stevenson, Tarkington “played the sedulous ape” to a succession of literary masters, to find out how the thing was done. The interesting point is that the beginner kept this activity quite strictly to himself. “It was probably a consciousness of the foolish look which his unrewarded activities may have had outside that caused Mr. Tarkington at that time modestly to describe the serious schooling which he gave himself as ‘fussin’ with literachoor,’” Holliday tells us. The fact that the young man earned only $22.50 gross, or $62.50, or whatever it was, by his first five years of literary effort has since been as widely published as Joseph Hergesheimer’s fourteen years without a single acceptance.

The junior Tarkington was under no necessity of earning his living and a notebook kept at that time by his father records the repeated return by publishers of his first novel, _The Gentleman from Indiana_. _Monsieur Beaucaire_ was a long time getting accepted. The whimsical _Cherry_ was bought by Henry Mills Alden for Harper’s Magazine, pigeon-holed as a mistake and then unearthed and printed when _Monsieur Beaucaire_ had made Tarkington “valuable.” Forty thousand words of an early draft of _The Gentleman from Indiana_ had had to be discarded because, having got his hero out for a walk, Tarkington could carry neither him nor the story any further. After an interruption of some length, _The Two Vanrevels_ was resumed and wound up only with the greatest difficulty.

Mr. Tarkington was married in 1902 and again in 1912. He lived for a while in France and Italy (Capri). His summer home, at Kennebunkport, Maine, is usually spoken of with some reference to the study, where models of vessels of every rig, a valuable collection, are displayed. This is sometimes spoken of as “the house that _Penrod_ built” and the ship models are perhaps natural to a home overlooking a New England harbour. It is also to be recollected that certain of Mr. Tarkington’s ancestors hailed from Salem. Perhaps any other significance in those ships is merely fanciful.

No one who meets Booth Tarkington is insensible to the personal charm of the man. He is absolutely without affectation, and the perfect host, the staunch friend, the sympathetic listener and the contained and modest talker. Whatever the vicissitudes he has undergone, whatever the pressures put upon him, he has weathered them all with a steady helm. It seems an astonishing, unwarranted and probably an impudent thing to suggest that this man has been to a deplorable extent the victim of circumstances (largely comfortable circumstances); and that, with a less winning personality--if some outward expression for the thing must be sought--the chances are he would have been a much greater writer than, on his record, he is today.

iii

You see, of course, how handicapped he was from the start by being “a good fellow.” The extent of that handicap can only be realised, I think, by knowing that to this day “nothing, apparently, so much gives Mr. Tarkington the horrors as the idea of the ‘literary.’ He does not want to be ‘caught,’ he declares, writing ‘prose.’” I quote Mr. Holliday, who adds: “Some literary editor in New York told him that some of the passages in _The Turmoil_, in particular (I think) the cemetery scene, were noble English prose, worthy, I suppose, of the author of _Urn Burial_. ‘He liked them,’ says Mr. Tarkington with a wry face, as though, if he knew just how, he would cut those passages out.” But why should Tarkington be horrified by the thought that he may have written “literature”? What black curse lies upon “literature”? The only one I know is the contempt of “good fellows” and other philistines for an affair they know nothing of and self-defensively profess to despise. And if Mr. Tarkington thinks, as perhaps he does, that he spent painful years of reading and practise writing without the secret hope that he would some day write a piece of literature, then, I suspect, he is much mistaken. But what is it, this mental process? Why should he be “very quick to insist” that none of his family have been “offensively” literary? Who is offended by literature? “Good fellows” have been known to be very much annoyed by the presence among them of one whose possession of a taste they did not share seemed to impugn their own completeness. There is more than a suspicion that “Tark” has jekyllhyded others so long as to have concealed something very precious to him from himself. There could be no greater contrast, for example, than between Joseph Hergesheimer and Booth Tarkington (in this matter). Both are persons of some taste and genius who follow the profession of letters. I reveal nothing when I say that Hergesheimer, of whom personally I am fond, is considered by many people to be most conceited. Mr. Hergesheimer would be the first to uphold such a statement. One of the universally-praised traits of Mr. Tarkington is his utter lack of self-conceit. What is the explanation?

Nobody lacks self-conceit, least of all a person with Tarkington’s endowment. It may not be detectable, but any psychologist will tell you it exists. Hergesheimer was just as “conceited” in the days when no editor would take his stuff as he is today; only the quality wasn’t visible, there being (practically speaking) no one to observe it. And the quality itself was fully engaged and enterprised in sustaining Joseph Hergesheimer, until such time as a measurable success, some rounds of applause, should sustain him. When that hour has struck in an artist’s life, fortunate the artist if he can turn the “self-conceit” (which is really self-sustention) into the direct channel of his work! But to return to Booth Tarkington: The environment of the Indianapolis of the 1880s (a pleasant town), was perhaps not the most favourable for a boy of a specially nervous constitution and that excessive sensitiveness so frequently found in company with a fine imagination. It isn’t to be wondered at that he was “precocious” until about the age of four, and “slow” after he began going to school. Phillips Exeter, like all such places, is devoted to finding the highest common social factor in the boy. What Purdue may have been when Tarkington went there, I have no idea; but it cannot possibly have exceeded Princeton as a place where self-disguise was imperative for self-preservation. There are plenty to remember those Princeton days, when students wore paint-stained corduroys and drank constructively, innocently mistaking eccentricities of dress and conduct for the achievement of personality. The real Tarkington underneath was forcing itself up at this time; he was writing for the college magazine such stuff as college magazines are made on. He went back to Indianapolis to continue writing; but the long era of good fellowship had done its work, a certain “self-conceit” and with it a decent open dignity had been put under battened hatches, and the young man was preparing to pay the fairly serious penalty--the penalty of an inability to take himself seriously enough, the penalty of wasted time, vitiated effort, delayed arrival, deferred achievement.

iv

Little wonder, then, that Mr. Tarkington told Mr. Holliday in 1917 that he was writing a book (_The Magnificent Ambersons_) that he didn’t think anybody would read; and a year or so later he was talking in the same strain about _Alice Adams_. The last remaining vestiges of an attitude which has crippled him are perceptible in such utterances. He was ready, in 1917, to admit that he couldn’t read Stevenson any longer, to confess that the stories of American politics called _In the Arena_ were about all of his early work he “could stand to re-read.” Popularity and unpopularity, he thought, had always been an accident with him; his idea seemed to be that “anybody can write a popular story”--of course, anybody can’t--and, as for himself, he had never “played the goat to entertain anybody.” And devices in his books that might have the air of being bids for popular favour were there simply because, when he wrote, he didn’t know any better. As for putting them in to please an editor or reader: “Really, I’d as soon have forged a check.”

Holliday quotes him further: “I’ve written things only as I thought they ought to be written. I thought in my youth that life could be got into books with prettier colours and more shaping than the models actually had; and I fell in with a softer, more commonplace and more popular notion of what a _story_ should be. Where that acceptance definitely stopped in _me_ (though the book may not show it) was _Beauty and the Jacobin_. It was at that time that I was painting with my old ornamental picture framer. Until then, I thought they were the ‘cheese,’--not for sales, but the _right_ ‘cheese.’”

Perfectly honest! If there is anything else, and I think there is, it is hidden from Mr. Tarkington himself, or was. We may look upon the melodrama and sentimentalism of _The Gentleman from Indiana_, or _The Conquest of Canaan_ and feel less distaste for them than does Tarkington who, at their mention, looks pitifully unhappy. He is suffering the acute reaction of the years after, whereas it is possible for us to note the simple fact that what now seems conventional and cheap in those novels was much less conventional, and not nearly so cheap, in 1899 and 1905. The fact remains--doesn’t it?--of Tarkington having written an essentially realistic novel, his first, when we were all wild about _Richard Carvel_ and _Prisoners of Hope_ and _When Knighthood Was in Flower_--that sort of thing. Although, to be sure, there was _The Honorable Peter Sterling_, there had been the earlier novels of William Dean Howells, and Theodore Dreiser was putting on paper _Sister Carrie_. Another fact that remains is the co-existence (1905) of _In the Arena_ and _The Conquest of Canaan_ and the fixed, large achievement, in 1912-13, of the novel called _The Flirt_.

It is easy to agree with Mr. Holliday that the efforts at invention in the story surrounding Cora Madison are “childlike,” but I am convinced that _The Flirt_ is a novel for which a place must be reserved in any list of twenty distinguished American novels. The portrayals of Cora and her brother, the boy Hedrick, seem to me to settle that. Thackeray’s picture of Becky Sharp is, I feel, no more biting than Tarkington’s delineation of Cora; Hedrick has as much gusto as any character of Dickens; and in both cases Mr. Tarkington has accomplished the thing with less than half the effort Thackeray and Dickens brought to bear. Of Tarkington, as they would say in golf, it is all in the wrist. The same undemonstrative precision, skill and force which went into the porcelain perfection of _Monsieur Beaucaire_, which fumbled so badly in such a mixture (“the rough”) as _The Two Vanrevels_, is felt on every page of _The Flirt_ where Cora or Hedrick are “in play.” Unfortunately, the inspired suggestion of the present Mrs. Tarkington which was responsible for the existence of Hedrick Madison is also responsible indirectly for the boy Penrod. Those Penrod stories which, Tarkington admits, cost no effort to write! Toward this variety of work several attitudes are possible. The strictest condemns it, and because of it rates down the author. Obviously, such a view is just only where the author has held his writing throughout as a sacred vocation. The severe, exalted standard of judgment cannot very well be applied to anyone like Arnold Bennett or Booth Tarkington, both of whom, for quite different reasons, have a lively sense of what I would call the amenities of living. A more tolerant attitude holds the author justified for one or several excuses--he may have his living to make, he may have the thing in him and need to get it out of his system, the demand for Penrodism may carry its vox-populi-vox-Dei conviction, there may be nothing else to write.... Between the smashing drive and the perfect strokes on the putting green, one is not allowed to intermit the bad brassy or the futile iron shot; one is required to play.

_The Flirt_ appeared in 1913, _Penrod_ in 1914, _The Turmoil_ in 1915, _Penrod and Sam_ in 1916, _Seventeen_, an outgrowth of _Penrod_, in 1916 also; _The Magnificent Ambersons_ in 1918, and _Ramsey Milholland_, the last wring-out of Tarkington’s Bad Boy in 1919. Even those who declare the creation of Penrod and William Sylvanus Baxter, Jr. (in _Seventeen_) to be “great work”--and they are numerous and their opinion is respectable--will perhaps feel, as they contemplate the prolonged attack of Penroditis, that this adolescent in literature gave his fashioner a distinct setback. They may look with admiration at a photograph of the study in The House That Penrod Built and witness all those ships, and the thought may occur to them that these beautiful toys took too long the place of ampler vessels, which, with rich cargoes, with the help of the stars and in spite of weather, might have been worked home.

v

One such fine vessel, richly-freighted, made port at last, in 1921, the _Alice Adams_. To praise this novel, the first in which Mr. Tarkington made an entirely successful passage, is easy; to discriminate in regard to it is difficult, for the simple reason that Mr. Tarkington’s past work has made such a performance incomparable. Here was a man who in his greatest feats had always shown corresponding blemishes. _The Flirt_ had been spotted with melodrama (as if the drama of Cora and the mordancy of Hedrick did not serve to tarnish any artificial sheen). _The Turmoil_, more skilfully constructed than _The Flirt_, suffered an entire loss of the detachment which Tarkington preserved toward Cora Madison; and instead of a pitiless portrayal we had a modern morality play. _The Magnificent Ambersons_ was afflicted with a pulled-around ending. But in _Alice Adams_ all of these defects were met and adjusted; the movement was natural and not “plotted”; no moral underlay the exposed incidents; Mr. Tarkington was impartial without being in the least unsympathetic. Then why discriminate? Surely, _Alice Adams_ has everything! Not at all. No author’s one book ever has, I suppose; and in finally achieving the symmetry and truth and grace of _Alice Adams_ there was the sacrifice of a nervous force which animated, in a varying extent, all three of the earlier novels. One must learn, in criticism, to value above all else what can only be called “vitality,” whether in painting, or sculpture, music or literature. This mysterious but indispensable flame burns with a different intensity in individual writers. In Mr. Galsworthy, for example, it is low in novels, somewhat higher, at times, in plays; but relatively low throughout his work. In Mr. Tarkington, I cannot help feeling, it is higher in _The Flirt_ than in anything else he has written; for savage and powerful as are the stories of _In the Arena_, the material is something that the author touches with his foot, rather than shapes with his hands. Indeed, this instinctive repugnance in Mr. Tarkington, as inveterate in him as in so many American writers, is one of the strictest limitations on his art. In older cultures than ours in America, where it is well understood that admission to the human race cannot be denied by some to others, a Balzac or a Conrad or even a Dickens can write with the same manifest vitality of almost anybody, however inhumanly horrible--as, for example, the “incorruptible” Professor and mad anarchist in Conrad’s tale of _The Secret Agent_. In the case of Tarkington, Mr. Holliday has cleverly observed the type of material in which our writer’s vitality is most evident--the memorable procession of drunkards in his stories, the unmatched darkeys of the stable alleys, the large number of Tarkington characters vocal with song.

As to plays: the man doesn’t regard them as his “real trade.” All the earlier ones were written in collaboration, usually with Harry Leon Wilson; and Tarkington, with an engaging candour, admits at once that the great cost of a theatrical production must be met, if possible, by filling the house. Writing alone, he has given the stage such utter ineptitude as _Poldekin_ and such delicious comedy as _Clarence_. He now writes a play, usually, because a particular producer wants one with a particular actor in mind. In his book-length fiction he is unrestricted, unless the engagement in advance of the next couple of novels for serial publication may have its oblique effect. After all, it must be very difficult, knowing that your next two books are first to be placed before a certain large constituency of women readers, not to select your material “according” and not to mould it imperceptibly somewhat nearer the--supposed, suspected, or ascertained--hearts’ desire of all those ladies.

vi

Booth Tarkington’s home in Indianapolis, at 1100 North Pennsylvania Street, is a plain brick house, far from new. Business creeps into the street, but there is some “lawn” still about the house, a hedge, Virginia creeper on the brick walls. Six winter months are spent here, the other six in the house at Kennebunkport, which, being newer, is furnished with more simplicity and taste. Tarkington’s workshop is upstairs--a tilted drawing board beside an east window, a flexible electric lamp, plenty of large-size sheets of yellow paper, two dozen pencils kept sharp by two pencil-sharpening machines. Tarkington has never used a typewriter and dictates only letters and not all of those. His sister-in-law, Miss Louise Keifer, copies his pencilled yellow pages of manuscript on the typewriter. Spectacles of all sizes and weights lie on a table. The man breakfasts between nine and ten, works until 1.30, and then pauses to eat a slender lunch brought to his study on a tray. He continues working until 3.30, and sometimes writes in the evenings, although the habit of writing pretty regularly at night has been abandoned. Even so it is a longer working day than most writers can keep. Mrs. Tarkington intercepts all interruptions; no telephone call can break in, nor any thought-distracting piece of news. On evenings when there is no engagement and Tarkington is not writing, he will play double-deck solitaire for an hour, read until about one o’clock, then go to bed. In Maine the day’s programme is a half-hour earlier throughout; work stops around noon; a short motor ride and a quick dip in the ocean follow; and the afternoon is most likely to be spent in a motorboat. The Maine evening frequently includes a walk of a mile to and from the movies; this is mainly for the sake of the walk, although the worse the picture is, the more restful Tarkington is likely to find it.

Notes, sometimes covering several dozen pencilled pages and undecipherable by anyone else, precede the composition of a play or novel. They are vague ideas and suggestions, the writer endeavouring not to crystallise his story too suddenly. When this occurs, it is sometimes necessary to write the next to the last chapter or scene and then go back to the general plan or the beginning. Work proceeds every day, Sundays included, and averages about 1,400 words a day of fresh output, preceded by correction of the previous day’s writing. In addition to this day by day revision, Tarkington revises a story or book as a whole; it is then typed, and after that is seldom altered.

“He has never resorted to neurotic realism or the much over-exploited nastiness of high life to give zest to his fiction,” says a recent utterance in praise of Mr. Tarkington. And the author is quoted as himself saying: “The problems of youth had been interesting me for some time, more than I realised”--when he turned to _Penrod_--“except the one problem that most people who call themselves realists feel that they must deal with--that is, in an untrammelled fashion--the problem of sex, which I have never felt was a subject for exploitation.”

“Neurotic realism” is a phrase of wabbly connotation, but if a study of neurotic characters and tendencies be meant, there are plenty of those in Tarkington fiction. Most of the Tarkington drunkards are neurotic, Cora Madison is a victim of the narcism complex, and, as Mr. Holliday has pointed out, “_The Turmoil_ is remarkable as a book of nervous diseases.” One of the most unlifelike things about Penrod (still more, William Sylvanus Baxter, Jr., he of _Seventeen_) is the absolute erasure of that contact with “the facts of life” which constitutes one of the indubitable facts of boyhood. And though as many crimes have been committed in the name of realism as in the name of liberty, the painfully sincere purpose of some of our most “untrammelled” writers in their treatment of sex cannot justly be called “exploitation.” One thinks of Sherwood Anderson. The analysis of Holliday, in a final quest for the secret of Tarkington’s popularity as an author (not invariable, but abundant), is perhaps as good as we shall get:

“He is very much like most people. There is nothing, except its energy, peculiar about his mind; it has no strong idiosyncratic bias, no strange, abnormal quality. At first, as in _Cherry_, he may have been excessively belletristic. That was not only not odd, but quite natural in a well-educated, young writer. But, just for the joke of the thing, think for an instant of Mr. Tarkington in connection with such a writer as, let us say, George Moore. In this wearer of the literary ermine you find laid bare a soul compacted of nearly everything that is detestable to the mind of a plain citizen going about his business in the marketplace. He has confessed consuming egotism, quivering sensibility, fastidiousness, vanity, timidity coupled with calculating shamelessness, sensuality, a streak of feline cruelty, and absolute spiritual incontinence. Or try to think of Mr. Tarkington coming along with some such perverse thinking (however shrewd) as Samuel Butler’s: ‘the worst misfortune that can happen to any person is to lose his money; the second is to lose his health; and the loss of reputation is a bad third.’ Mr. Tarkington admires all those things which every decent, ordinary, simple-hearted person admires: dash, courage, honesty, honour, feminine virtue and graciousness and beauty, and so on. He hates precisely those things hated by all honest, healthy ‘American’ people: sham, egoism, conceit, cruelty, affectation, and so forth. In short, though he is a red hot artist (and most Americans ‘don’t care a nickel for art’), he believes in all those things which make up the creed of the average sane, wholesome person in this country. He has infectious humour, and (though savage in attack upon what he feels to be vicious) abounding ‘good humour.’ Added to all this, he has a most winning and rich, though not at all complex, personality. He is in his own person, indeed, what most of us would like to be. In a word, doubtless his books are popular because of the same qualities that made their author popular as an undergraduate.”

There are compensations of all kinds on this earth, and one of Mr. Tarkington’s--the most enviable of all, I think--must be knowledge of a certain occasion in which he was of the utmost possible service to another American writer. The course he took at that time, the energy he displayed, would have been very improbable in one whose natural vanity of himself as an artist was in the least like George Moore’s. If it was for too long a literary misfortune that Mr. Tarkington’s “self-conceit” lay in the direction of being a good fellow, at least he made of good fellowship, in this instance, the minted gold of personal greatness. No! Now it can_not_ be told; but there will be those alive to tell it.

Books by Booth Tarkington

1899 _The Gentleman from Indiana_ 1900 _Monsieur Beaucaire_ 1902 _The Two Vanrevels_ 1903 _Cherry_ earlier, in composition, than _The Gentleman from Indiana_ 1905 _In the Arena_ 1905 _The Conquest of Canaan_ 1905 _The Beautiful Lady_ 1907 _His Own People_ 1908 _The Guest of Quesnay_ 1909 _Beasley’s Christmas Party_ 1911 _Beauty and the Jacobin_ 1913 _The Flirt_ 1914 _Penrod_ 1915 _The Turmoil_ 1916 _Penrod and Sam_ 1916 _Seventeen_ 1918 _The Magnificent Ambersons_ 1919 _Ramsey Milholland_ 1921 _Alice Adams_ 1922 _Gentle Julia_ 1923 _The Fascinating Stranger and Other Stories_

Plays by Booth Tarkington

1901 _Monsieur Beaucaire_ with E. G. SUTHERLAND

With HARRY LEON WILSON: 1906 _The Man from Home_ 1907 _Cameo Kirby_ 1908 _Your Humble Servant_ 1908 _Springtime_ 1909 _Getting a Polish_ 1916 _Mister Antonio_

1917 _The Country Cousin_ with JULIAN STREET

With HARRY LEON WILSON: 1919 _The Gibson Upright_ 1919 _Up from Nowhere_

1919 _Clarence_ 1920 _Poldekin_ 1921 _The Wren_ 1921 _The Intimate Strangers_

Sources on Booth Tarkington

_Booth Tarkington_, by Robert Cortes Holliday. DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. Authoritative, honest, delightful; especially sound in its detailed criticism of the books up to and including _The Turmoil_ and _Seventeen_. When Holliday’s book was written, Tarkington was at work on _The Magnificent Ambersons_, for an estimate of which see Holliday’s _Broome Street Straws_.

_Contemporary American Novelists_, 1900-1920, by Carl Van Doren. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

_Booth Tarkington at Home_, by John R. McMahon, LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL, November, 1922 (page 15).

Private Information.

Articles, reviews, etc., are plentiful and the reader is advised to consult the READERS’ GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE for the years since 1914.

_13. A Parody Outline of Stewart_

i

About two years ago, when Donald Ogden Stewart had just abandoned the bond business for the pursuit of a literary career, he was asked to write a brief account of his life, with the following result:

“Donald Ogden Stewart was born in Columbus, Ohio, on November 30, 1894. In his early years he gave manifold evidences of his gift for humour, and many of his bright childhood remarks are still related by his proud mother upon the slightest provocation, or in fact, upon no provocation at all. There were others, however--principally among the guests at the hotel where Donald lived--who did not think that this child prodigy was so funny. Mr. Stewart bears a long red scar on his head--such as might be made by a brick or other missile--as mute evidence of one little red-headed girl’s particular lack of appreciation of his early humorous efforts.

“At the age of 14 he was sent to the Phillips Exeter Academy because it was a good preparatory school for Harvard. In the fall of 1912, Mr. Stewart entered Yale. While at New Haven, Mr. Stewart went out for all the athletic teams possible, and was always among those of whom it was said in the college paper at the end of the season, ‘And we also wish to thank those members of the third and fourth teams who have worked so faithfully without reward--and yet we cannot say without reward--for they are rewarded with the knowledge that they have worked for old Yale,’ etc.

“Mr. Stewart was graduated in 1916 and selected a certain large public service corporation as the scene of his future success. It was his desire to start at the bottom and work up; the first half of this wish was readily granted him. After a brief, inspiring visit with the head of the corporation, Mr. Stewart was sent to the Birmingham, Alabama, office which was about as far away as the head of the corporation could possibly send Mr. Stewart. While in Birmingham, Mr. Stewart took a keen interest in his job and read the complete works of Anatole France, George Moore, Fyodor Dostoievski, Henrik Ibsen, Gustav Flaubert and many others. He also intended to read the Alexander Hamilton business course, but did not quite get around to it before he was sent to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, office.

[Illustration: _Photo by Nickolas Muray_ DONALD OGDEN STEWART]

“In Pittsburgh, Mr. Stewart took a keen interest in his job and read the works of Leo Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche, G. B. Shaw, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad and others. He also started to take piano lessons and got as far as ‘The Happy Farmers.’ He was just on the point of reading the Alexander Hamilton business course when he was sent to Chicago. After ten months in Chicago, Mr. Stewart joined the Navy. Having never been on a ship or the ocean in his life, he was at once appointed an instructor in Practical Navigation, Seamanship, Naval Ordnance, and Signals. This experience was invaluable and Mr. Stewart came out of the Great War a deepened man.

“His old position with the great corporation awaited him and Mr. Stewart went back to the work of the world in the spring of 1918. He was sent to the Minneapolis office, where he took a keen interest in his job and read the works of H. G. Wells, Havelock Ellis, and H. L. Mencken; met F. Scott Fitzgerald, and led two cotillions. He was also preparing to take up the Alexander Hamilton business course when he accepted an offer of employment in Dayton, Ohio, with a financial organisation.

“Mr. Stewart spent a delightful year in Dayton where he learned to play golf, and read the works of Max Beerbohm, Sainte-Beuve, Casanova, Swift, James Branch Cabell, James Huneker, and William Congreve. He also renewed his piano lessons, getting as far as the Bach three-part inventions and ‘Easy Classics.’ On December 30, 1920, he read the first volume of the Alexander Hamilton business course, after which he decided that he wanted to go in for literature. In January, 1921, Mr. Stewart came to New York City to find a job (literary if possible), but there were so many symphony concerts that month that he didn’t get a chance to look around until the middle of February.

“The idea for the _Parody Outline of History_ came to Mr. Stewart in March, while hearing Mr. Mengelberg conduct the National Orchestra in the Pathetique Symphony.

“Mr. Stewart is unmarried and very near-sighted. He is fond of Beethoven, Scotch, and Max Beerbohm.”

ii

So much for Mr. Stewart’s life up to the publication of _The Parody Outline of History_. In the following year (1922)--but let Mr. Stewart again speak:

“After the appearance of the _Parody Outline_ Mr. Stewart, having heard a great deal about Europe in the course of his naval war service in Chicago, decided to go abroad. Many of his friends recommended Paris as a pleasant city in which to work, so Mr. Stewart went to Paris, which he found indeed very pleasant but not for work. So after a brief period of recuperation he journeyed to Vienna where he grew a splendid red beard and wrote _Perfect Behavior_.

“Finding, however, that the beard was exhausting too much of his creative energy, Mr. Stewart shaved and went to Budapest, where he enjoyed himself immensely at the rate of 700 Hungarian crowns to the dollar.

“But in the middle of October he began to feel strangely uneasy, and as his condition grew steadily worse he consulted an authority and learned, to his surprise and delight, that he was going to have another book.

“Bidding a hasty farewell to the gay life of Budapest, which now seemed all too empty and frivolous, Mr. Stewart journeyed with his precious secret to Capri, there, under the ever-blue Italian skies, to await the happy event. He prayed with all his heart that it might be a novel, for he had never had a novel, although he had wanted one all his life. But early in February, 1923, Mr. Stewart discovered that the ‘little stranger’ was to be another satire, and although it was a bit of a blow at first, after a few days he got over his disappointment at not having a novel; and when, in June, Mr. Stewart returned to America he took with him, proudly, his little third book, which he had christened _Aunt Polly’s Story of Mankind_.”

iii

Alexander Woollcott speaking in “Shouts and Murmurs” in the New York Herald of March 18, 1923:

“Stewart is a preposterously tall, blonde man, with an enviably large amount of his twenties still to squander. His profile is faintly reminiscent of that most delightful and fantastic of all creatures, Winsor McKay’s Gertie. He knows more about the music than he does about the books of the world, and has, we suspect, gone in for reading so recently that he probably thinks all novels are like Joyce’s _Ulysses_. We ran across him here and there in France last summer, starting out on one pilgrimage together from the Café Valterre, in the Place Stanislas at Nancy, that celebrated restaurant which set forth marvellous dishes even when the bombs were dropping on Nancy every evening and there was not another good meal to be found anywhere else in Lorraine. Up the street somewhere was M. Coué, healing away for dear life, and on the outskirts of the town an imitation Oberammergau was in full swing. But the two of us were minded rather to move on to the battlefields, and for the purpose engaged a morsel of a French car, driven by a youngster who spoke a horrible dialect he had picked up three years before from the Americans stationed at Neufchateau. The memories of that rambling excursion into a cheerless countryside, still littered with the rusted snarls of barbed wire and still gashed with the trenches no one has had time or strength to obliterate, are brought flooding back by the inscription in the copy of _Perfect Behavior_ lying open here on the desk. It is inscribed: ‘In memory of terrible days and ghastly nights on the battlefields of France,’ and winds up with this disconcerting proclamation: ‘“It shall never happen again.”--Stewart.’

“Marc Connelly was agitated the other day by the receipt of a cablegram from Stewart in Capri which read thus:

“‘The Queen of Sweden is here. What shall I do?--Stewart.’

“Connelly’s cabled reply must be admired equally for its sagacity and its thrift. It was: ‘Compromise.’”

Books by Donald Ogden Stewart

1921 _A Parody Outline of History_ 1922 _Perfect Behavior_ 1923 _Aunt Polly’s Story of Mankind_

Sources on Donald Ogden Stewart

_The Making of a Humorist_, by DONALD OGDEN STEWART, suppressed by the author, 1921.

_My Naval Career_, by DONALD OGDEN STEWART (Privately unpublished, 1921).

_14. Miss Zona Gale_

i

No one any longer doubts that Zona Gale belongs in the very small company of American women novelists whose work is of the first artistic importance. Her history is interesting. Of old New England parentage, she was born in Portage, Wisconsin, where she now lives. She wrote, at thirteen, a novel “which almost simultaneously came back to me from a publisher.” At sixteen, just after she had entered the University of Wisconsin, she submitted a 3,000-word short story to the Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin, which paid her $3. When she finished college she went to work for that newspaper. “I secured a position by attrition. I presented myself every morning at the desk of the city editor. At the end of two weeks the city editor let me write about a flower show. I have never put such emotion into anything else I have written.” She was another month getting on the staff. Later, by offering a list of suggestions based on the day’s news, she succeeded after many weeks in getting on the staff of the New York World.

An anonymous writer in The Bookman has pictured Miss Gale in New York: “When she was a reporter on the World, and as beautiful as any girl could be, she was put on difficult assignments that might well have terrified one as fragile and flower-like and feminine as she; but she never winced.... She covered murders and robberies--anything given her to do she did, at any hour of the day or night. But all the while she was writing exquisite poetry; and every day of her life she sent a letter to her mother, who was back in Wisconsin. If she was waiting for an interview with some financier of the hour, she did not dawdle her time away in the corridor of his hotel. Instead, she pulled out a pad and pencil and wrote as many pages as she could on a short story; or she dashed off a lyric; or she made copious notes for future work. I think she was about the most ambitious girl in New York at that time--too ambitious, some said; her praises were being sung--too much sung was a common rumour; her picture--how lovely she was, and is!--was published repeatedly--too repeatedly, dear enemies whispered; and everyone was waiting to see just how long it would take her to make good.”

ii

It took some time. Not until the year in which she was 29 did she land anywhere “to speak of,” though for ten years previous to that acceptance, by Success Magazine, she had constantly submitted stories. That was in 1903. Then, in 1911, the Delineator held a short story contest in which over 15,000 stories were received. Miss Gale took first prize with a tale called “The American Dawn.” It was $2,000 and in addition her other two entries (each person was allowed to submit three stories) were deemed good enough to be purchased. But meanwhile she had written stories about Pelleas and Ettare, two old lovers, and stories about Friendship Village--some forty of the first and, ultimately, about sixty of the second--and the process of collecting her Friendship Village fiction into books had begun. Said Miss Gale, in 1919: “The first editor to whom these Friendship Village stories were submitted declined them with the word that his acquaintance with small towns was wide but that he had never seen any such people as these.... I am still not sure that he was not right.”

She was the author of ten published books before she produced anything constituting a lien upon general attention. But then, with an effect of extreme suddenness to the world outside of Portage, there came from her pen the 402-page novel, _Birth_. Its length is a point of interest in view of the brevity of _Miss Lulu Bett_ and _Faint Perfume_, both of which are so decidedly under the average novel in length. And yet _Birth_ exhibits the same conciseness of phrase, the same avoidance of unnecessary words so noticeable in the two later books. It is the story of a poor little man, Marshall Pitt, who comes to an insignificant Western town as a pickle salesman and remains there as a paperhanger, a husband and a father. The book’s comments on life have been aptly described as “piercing”--it is a fine needlework of satire--but there are lovely lyrical moments and the tragic action is touched with majesty. Altogether a great novel. Miss Gale considers it the finest thing she has done and for once her judgment of her own work, generally as untrustworthy as most authors’ or slightly more so, is right.

Then came _Miss Lulu Bett_, read with the enthusiasm of discovery by the publisher, who telegraphed his congratulations--a thing publishers infrequently do! Except in England, where its merit was quickly noted, _Birth_ had not sold at all well. Six magazine editors had rejected _Miss Lulu Bett_ as a serial. Happily, all signs failed. The crisply-told little novel of the household drudge and her fortunes went into one edition after another; a play from the novel was sought and Miss Gale fashioned it herself; the annual Pulitzer prize was awarded to the play. Whether the concision of style practised so effectively in _Birth_ was not carried a bit too far in _Miss Lulu Bett_ must always remain a matter of opinion. The most interesting point, I think, is the change of ending which the requirements of the theatre forced upon Miss Gale. As she observed, an audience in a playhouse could not reasonably be expected to swallow the spectacle of a woman marrying two men in the space of three hours, even though the indicated lapse of time was much longer than that; she therefore, to make the play, caused Miss Bett’s first marriage to turn out to be valid after all. In this matter Miss Gale was not guilty of “sweetening” her story, as has been charged. She simply was up against a limitation as definite as that which restricts the number of scenes possible in a play.

iii

And this year she has given us _Faint Perfume_, a study of a finely sensitive feminine personality stifling in the atmosphere of a quite usual sort of American family. Leda Perrin, forced to make her home with the Crumbs, is brought into a fleeting contact with Barnaby Powers, a writer with a temperament of the same response. They meet, together face the defeat of their desire, and go separately apart. At the close there is the briefest possible second meeting and a hope is held out for their eventual happiness together. This theme, of the utmost delicacy, is the occasion for a considerable display of virtuosity by Miss Gale. By means of deft and distinct individualisation of her characters--each Crumb, for instance, standing out as a complete fiery particle--she orchestrates the melodic fragment of Leda and Barnaby in a sort of free treatment (but with careful working out), as a composer might do in setting a quartette for strings. May this musical simile be helpful! The clipped style of _Miss Lulu Bett_ is here carried a step further, until Miss Gale almost seems to out-Sinclair Miss May Sinclair. The style has been called precious, which is the technical word for what the ordinary person calls “affected”; and, on the other hand, one able critic has declared that it is not the style that is precious but Miss Gale’s material. One thing is certain, the treatment is as far removed as possible from the literalness of such a novel as _Main Street_, and this is natural to expect when we remember that Miss Gale is, after all and perhaps fundamentally, a poet. Her poems published in book form are to a great extent inferior to her best poems, which, so far as I know, still repose in some old files of the Smart Set magazine.

The point, however, is not the merit or demerit of _Faint Perfume_, nor the relative values of Miss Gale’s three books here discussed. The point is Zona Gale, her undeniable artistry, her literary maturity and her manifest power ... and the importance of her work to come.

Books by Zona Gale

1906 _Romance Island_ 1907 _The Loves of Pelleas and Ettarre_ 1908 _Friendship Village_ 1909 _Friendship Village Love Stories_ 1911 _Mothers to Men_ 1912 _Christmas_ 1913 _When I Was a Little Girl_ 1914 _Neighborhood Stories_ 1915 _Heart’s Kindred_ 1917 _A Daughter of Tomorrow_ 1918 _Birth_ 1919 _Peace in Friendship Village_ 1920 _Miss Lulu Bett_ 1920 _Neighbors_ (play) 1921 _Miss Lulu Bett_ (play) 1923 _Faint Perfume_

Sources on Zona Gale

_The Women Who Make Our Novels_ (second or third edition, 1919 or 1922). MOFFAT YARD & COMPANY.

The Literary Spotlight, XVIII: Zona Gale, in THE BOOKMAN for April, 1923. This article now forms a chapter in the book, _The Literary Spotlight_, with an introduction by John Farrar.

_Zona Gale, An Artist in Fiction_, by WILSON FOLLETT. Booklet published by D. Appleton & Company.

_15. For the Literary Investor_

i

As in the world of finance there are varieties of investment, so in reading. A delicate parallel would be between individual authors and, let us say, the mortgage field; whereas the reader who chooses books included in undertakings like the Lambskin Library, the Murray Hill Library or the Modern Student’s Library is like the man adventuring among well-seasoned bonds. The individual author is the bolder risk, less easily to be abandoned, lacking (usually) the element of diversification; the certainty of interest from those carefully selected Library volumes is somewhat greater and the investment in them is more readily marketable in the discovery that your commitment is shared with the other fellow, who also knows and has read them. Then there is among books that type of investment for which men constantly seek when trying to place their money--the unlisted and almost unheard-of, lonely, isolated enterprise which one may, and probably will, have all to himself....

What follows is a series of what, in the money world, would be called “offerings.” These literary offerings are not necessarily in the least related to each other, although here and there you may find features in common. Each stands on the foundation of its own “attractiveness” to you as an individual; but there is none which has not given a good return to some group of readers, large or less large. Some are well-seasoned; others, although new, show their intrinsic worth for such time and attention as you may commit to them.

ii

J. C. Snaith, novelist. John Collis Snaith, born in 1876, in Nottinghamshire of Yorkshire stock. Athletic in his youth, before his health became impaired, playing cricket, football and hockey on county teams. Always in the middle of a novel, either at Skegness or in London, where he may with difficulty be tracked down at the Garrick Club, hidden among W. J. Locke, W. B. Maxwell, A. E. W. Mason, Hugh Walpole, Arnold Bennett, E. Temple Thurston, etc. His novels exhibit constant variety. Richard Mansfield was always hoping for a play from Snaith’s _Broke of Covenden_ so that he might act as Broke. _The Sailor_, supposed to have been suggested by John Masefield’s career, was a great popular success (1916) and is read and remembered widely today. _The Coming_, an exquisite and powerful story in which the reappearance of Jesus Christ in present-day England is suggested, made an extraordinary impression. On the whole it is perhaps Snaith’s own favourite. _The Undefeated_, a story of England in wartime, had a large sale and gives promise of more permanence than any similar book, including H. G. Wells’s _Mr. Britling_. A recent novel, _The Van Roon_, is a lighter story written around the theft of a famous painting. Snaith’s _Araminta_, which is being freshly brought out this year, is a whimsical romance of a country girl who comes to London and is sued for by two noblemen. Snaith says: “Each novel I write is in the nature of an experiment. To me a good novel is a mental tonic, exhilarating, educative, humanising.” He is both versatile and in the quality of his work of unusual excellence.

W. B. Maxwell, novelist. English. A writer who has reached undeniable greatness at times and who, when possessing the finest material, need ask no odds of any living novelist. His most recent story, _The Day’s Journey_, is a beautifully-conceived and beautifully-written story of the friendship between two men enduring throughout their lives. The differences in character, the obstacles arising in the course of that friendship, the antagonisms and fallings-apart and the renewals of these two old comrades are put on paper with a fidelity of observation, a tenderness and an avoidance of sentimentality that would be difficult to overpraise. Maxwell’s novels are of great variety; attention is particularly called to _In Cotton Wool_, the story of a weakling. _Mrs. Thompson_, _The Devil’s Garden_ and _Spinster of This Parish_ are also highwater marks in his writing.

Hugh Walpole. Perhaps no living novelist has shown so uniform a quality or so progressive an excellence. He resembles a stock which, starting at a modest price and unfailingly paying dividends, has gone steadily upward to par and is now quoted at a premium. His great success, _The Cathedral_, is now followed by _Jeremy and Hamlet_, which, although not a “sequel,” is a companion volume to _Jeremy_ (most popular of all Walpole’s stories before the appearance of _The Cathedral_). As _Jeremy_ dealt with the history of a little boy--most singularly resembling the Hugh of Mr. Walpole’s own boyhood--so _Jeremy and Hamlet_ presents the adventures of that boy accompanied by the only proper companion for a small boy, a dog.

Rudyard Kipling. For a discussion of Kipling’s new work, _The Irish Guards in the Great War_, see