Down at Caxton's 1

Down at Caxton's 1

Down at Caxton's

 

Author: Walter Lecky

 

CONTENTS

 

Transcriber's Note: This table of contents was created by the

transriber.

 

MEN.

Richard Malcolm Johnston.

Marion Crawford.

Charles Warren Stoddard.

Maurice Francis Egan.

John B. Tabb.

James Jeffrey Roche.

George Parsons Lathrop.

Rev. Brother Azarias.

 

WOMEN.

Katherine Eleanor Conway.

Louise Imogen Guiney.

Mrs. Blake.

Agnes Repplier.

 

A WORD.

Literature and Our Catholic Poor.

 

 

 

 

MEN.

 

 

 

 

RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.

 

 

In that charming and dainty series of books published under the

captivating title of “Fiction, Fact and Fancy,” and edited by the

gifted son of the prince of American literary critics, there is a

volume with the companionable name of Billy Downs. It is as follows

that Mr. Stedman introduces the creator of Billy Downs and a host of

other characters, mostly types of Middle Georgia life, that shall live

with the language. “So we reach the tenth milestone of our ramble,

and while we are resting by the wayside let us hail the gentleman who

is approaching and ask him for ‘another story.’ We who have heard him

before know that he seldom fails to respond to such a request, and

always, too, in a manner quite inimitable. As he comes nearer you may

observe the dignified, yet courteous and kindly bearing of a gentleman

of the old school. The white hair and moustache, the sober dress,

betoken the veteran, although they are almost contradicted by eyes and

an innate youthfulness in word and thought. It is not difficult to

recognize in Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston the founder of a school

of fiction and the dean of Southern men of letters.” The Colonel is the

founder of a school of fiction, if by that school, we understand those,

who are depicting for us the Georgia life of the ante-bellum days.

In no otherwise can we assent to Mr. Stedman’s phrase. For American

critics to claim the dialect school of fiction as their own in origin,

is on a par with their other critical achievements. Dialect was born

a long time before Columbus took his way westward. The first wave of

mankind leaving the parent stock, in their efforts to survive, carried

with them the germ of dialect. Fiction in its portrayal of men and

manners of a given period, was bound to reproduce it faithfully—the

very least to give us a semblance of that life. This could not be done

in many instances without the use of dialect. To do so were to deprive

the portraiture of individuality.

 

Fiction produced on such lines would be worthless. Of late there has

been much cavil against dialect writers. This cavil, strange to say,

emanates from the Realists.

 

They lay down the absurd code, that Art is purely imitative. She

plays but a monkey part. Her sole duty is to depict life, paying

leading attention to the portrayal of corns, bunions, and other

horny excrescences, that so often accompany her. Realists will not

be persuaded that such excrescences are abnormal. From a jaundiced

introspection of their own little life, they frame canons of criticism

to guide the world. With these congenial canons lying before them, one

is astonished, if such a phrase may be used in the recent light of that

school’s pyrotechnic display, that they can condemn dialect. Granted,

for the sake of argument, that Art is merely imitative, will not the

first duty of the novelist be to reproduce the exact language, and

that when done by the master-hand of a Johnston carries with it not

only the speaker’s tone, but the power of producing a mental image of

the speaker—the very acme of the Realists’ school? To paint a Georgia

cracker speaking the ordinary Boston-English would be like crowning the

noble brow of a South Sea native with a tall Boston beaver. The effort

would be unartistic, the effect ludicrous. Colonel Johnston believes

in the imitativeness of Art, to the extent of reproducing for us the

peculiar dialect of Middle Georgia. He has informed us that there is

not a phrase in his novels that he has not heard amid the scenes of his

stories. To reproduce these is a distinct triumph of the novelist’s

art, but the Colonel has done more; into his every character has he

breathed a soul. His figures are not the automaton skeletons of the

Realists, but living men and women who have earnestly played life on

the circumscribed stage of Middle Georgia.

 

This life is fast passing away. Prof. Shaler, a competent authority,

tells us: “At present the strong tide of modernism is sweeping over the

old slave-holding States with a force which is certain to clear away

a greater part of the archaic motives which so long held place in the

minds of the people. With the death of this generation, which saw the

rebellion, the ancient regime will disappear.” It can never be lost

as long as the novels of Malcolm Johnston are extant. There, in days

to come, by the cheery ingle-nook, will a new generation live over in

his delightful pages the curious life of Georgia. Cuvier asked for a

bone to construct his skeleton. The readers of the Dukesborough tales,

Billy Downs, etc., will not only have the skeleton, but live men and

women preserved for them by the novelist’s elixir. He has known his

country and kept close to mother earth, having in his mind that “no

language, after it has faded into diction, none that cannot suck up

feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother earth of common folk,

can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of

phrase do not pass from page to page, but from man to man.... There is

death in the dictionary.” That the Colonel’s language has sucked up

feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother earth of common folk

will be seen on every page. Let us take at random the communication of

Jones Kendrick to his cousin Simeon Newsome, as to S’phrony Miller. Sim

is a farmer lad overshadowed by the overpowering “dictionary use” of

his Cousin Kendrick. Sim has gone a-wooin’ S’phrony. Kendrick hearing

of this and urged by his mother and sister, comes to the conclusion

that he would like to have S’phrony himself. This important fact he

admits to Cousin Sim in the following choice morsel: Sim is overseeing

his hands on the plantation; Kendrick approaches and is met by Sim.

Kendrick speaks:

 

“Ma and sister Maria have been for some time specified. They have both

been going on to me about S’phrony Miller in a way and to an extent

that in some circumstances might be called obstropolus, and to quiet

their conscience I’ve begun a kind of a visitation over there, and

my mind has arriv at the conclusion that she’s a good, nice piece

of flesh, to use the __EXPRESSION__s of a man of the world, and society.

What do you think, Sim, of the matter under consideration, and what

would you advise? I like to have your advice sometimes, and I’d like

to know what it would be under all circumstances and appearances of a

case which, as it stands, it seems to have, and it isn’t worth while

to conceal the fact that it does have, a tremendous amount of immense

responsibility to all parties, especially to the undersigned, referring

as is well known in books and newspaper advertisements to myself. What

would you say to the above, Sim, in all its parts and parties?” It

may interest the reader to know that Sim acquiesced “in all its parts

and parties,” and that S’phrony became Mrs. Kendrick, while Sim took

another mate. Of further interest to the imaginative young woman is

the fact, that Mrs. Newsome and Mr. Kendrick perishing a few years

later by some sort of quasi-involuntary but always friendly movements,

executed in a comparatively brief time, S’phrony and Sim became one.

In calling Johnston the dean of Southern men of letters, Stedman does

not define his position. Page, the creator of Marse Chan, and one of

the most talented of Southern dialect writers, negatively does so. In

an article that has literary smack, but lacks critical perception,

he rates him below Miss Murfree, James Lane Allen, and Cable. These

three writers Page places at the head of Southern writers of fiction.

Critics nowadays will adduce no proof; they simply affirm. The text of

this discrimination should be the exactness of the character drawing,

the life-like reproduction of environments, and the expertness of the

dialect as a vehicle to convey the local flavor. It will hardly be

gainsaid that Johnston knows his Georgia no less than Cable knows

Louisiana. Johnston is a native of Georgia; the time of life most

susceptible to local impressions was spent there. Cable’s boyhood was

otherwise. It will not be thought of that in the painting of Creole

life, Cable has excelled the painter of Georgia life. In the handling

of dialect, Johnston and Harris touch the high water mark of Southern

fiction. It was an old critical dictum that an author to succeed must

be in sympathy with his subject; this may be affirmed of Johnston.

It is otherwise with Cable, and especially with Lane, whose Kentucky

pictures are often caricatures. Cable poses as the friend of the

colored man. His pose is dramatic. It lends a charm to his New England

recitations. We have a great love for champions of every kind. The most

of Mr. Cable’s pages deal with Creole life, and for that life he has no

sympathy. He paints it as essentially pagan, albeit it was essentially

Catholic. A padre makes him sniff the air and paw ungraciously. The

ceremonies of the church are so many pagan rites. Cable belongs to

the school that contemns what it does not understand. His pictures of

Creole life are untrue, and much as they were in vogue some years ago,

are passing to the bourne of the forgotten. Johnston, although a living

Catholic, fond of his church, and wedded to her every belief, draws

an itinerant preacher of the Methodists with as much enthusiasm and

sympathy as he would the clergy of his own church. He has no dislikes,

nothing that is of man but interests this sunny-hearted romancer of the old South.