by W. H. Rhodes
Produced by David A. Schwan
THE CASE OF SUMMERFIELD
By William Henry Rhodes
With an Introduction by Geraldine Bonner
THE INTRODUCTION
The greatest master of the short story our country has known found hisinspiration and produced his best work in California. It is now nearlyforty years since "The Luck of Roaring Camp" appeared, and a line ofsuccessors, more or less worthy, have been following along thetrail blazed by Bret Harte. They have given us matter of many kinds,realistic, romantic, tragic, humorous, weird. In this mass of materialmuch that was good has been lost. The columns of newspapers swallowedsome; weeklies, that lived for a brief day, carried others to the gravewith them. Now and then chance or design interposed, and some fragmentof value was not allowed to perish. It is matter for congratulation thatthe story in this volume was one of those saved from oblivion.
In 1871 a San Francisco paper published a tale entitled The Case ofSummerfield. The author concealed himself under the name of "Caxton," apseudonym unknown at the time. The story made an immediate impression,and the remote little world by the Golden Gate was shaken into startledand enquiring astonishment. Wherever people met, The Case of Summerfieldwas on men's tongues. Was Caxton's contention possible? Was it truethat, by the use of potassium, water could be set on fire, and thatany one possessing this baneful secret could destroy the world? Theplausibility with which the idea was presented, the bare directnessof the style, added to its convincing power. It sounded too real to beinvention, was told with too frank a simplicity to be all imagination.People could not decide where truth and fiction blended, and the name ofCaxton leaped into local fame.
The author of the tale was a lawyer, W. H. Rhodes, a man of standing andability, interested in scientific research. He had written little; whattime he had been able to spare from his work, had been given to studiesin chemistry whence he had drawn the inspiration for such stories as TheCase of Summerfield. With him the writing of fiction was a pastime, nota profession. He wrote because he wanted to, from the urgence of an ideapressing for utterance, not from the more imperious necessity of keepingthe pot boiling and of there being a roof against the rain. Literarycreation was to him a rest, a matter of holiday in the daily round of aman's labor to provide for his own.
His output was small. One slender volume contains all he wrote: a fewpoems, half a dozen stories. In all of these we can feel the spellexercised over him by the uncanny, the terrible, the weirdly grotesque.His imagination played round those subjects of fantastic horror whichhad so potent an attraction for Fitz James O'Brien, the writer whom hemost resembles. There was something of Poe's cold pleasure indissecting the abnormally horrible in "The Story of John Pollexfen,"the photographer, who, in order to discover a certain kind of lens,experimented with living eyes. His cat and dog each lost an eye, andfinally a young girl was found willing to sell one of hers that shemight have money to help her lover. But none of the other stories showsthe originality and impressively realistic tone which distinguish TheCase of Summerfield. In this he achieved the successful combination ofaudacity of theme with a fitting incisiveness of style. It alone risesabove the level of the merely ingenious and clever; it alone of his workwas worth preserving.
Scattered through the ranks of writers, part of whose profession is acontinuous, unflagging output, are these "one story men," who, in somepropitious moment, when the powers of brain and heart are intensified bya rare and happy alchemy, produce a single masterpiece. The visionand the dream have once been theirs, and, though they may never againreturn, the product of the glowing moment is ours to rejoice in andwonder at. Unfortunately the value of these accidental triumphs is notalways seen. They go their way and are submerged in the flood of fictionthat the presses pour upon a defenseless country. Now and then oneunexpectedly hears of them, their unfamiliar titles rise to the surfacewhen writers gather round the table. An investigator in the forgottenfiles of magazinedom has found one, and tells of his treasure trove asthe diver of his newly discovered pearl. Then comes a publisher, who,diligent and patient, draws them from their hiding-places, shakes offthe dust, and gives them to a public which once applauded and has sinceforgotten.
Such has been the fate of The Case of Summerfield. Thirty-five yearsago, in the town that clustered along the edge of San Francisco Bay, ithad its brief award of attention. But the San Francisco of that daywas very distant--a gleam on the horizon against the blue line of thePacific. It took a mighty impetus to carry its decisions and opinionsacross the wall of the Sierra and over the desert to the East. Fame andreputation, unless the greatest, had not vitality for so long a flight.So the strange and fantastic story should come as a discovery, the oneremarkable achievement of an unknown author, who, unfortunately, is nolonger here to enjoy an Indian summer of popularity.
Geraldine Bonner.
THE CASE OF SUMMERFIELD