by Kate Chopin
V
A good many of us who were alive back in the seventies are wondering why under the canopy Mrs. Mackin, or “Sallie Britton” as we all remember her, should have written her memoirs. Though for my part I find it quite natural that a woman should want to write her memoirs, and enjoy doing so; even a common, every-day person, let alone “A Society Woman on Two Continents.”
When I learned, a week or two ago, that Sallie, who was my contemporary, had been writing memoirs, I was seized with an insane desire to do likewise. I remembered how she used to come up on St. Ange Avenue from her home around on Chouteau to ask my mother’s permission for me to stay all night with her. A request which was never granted, because Sallie was not a Catholic! And to-day, here she is, not only a Catholic, but actually receiving a golden rose from the Pope! While I — Well, I doubt if the Holy Father has ever heard of me, or if he would give me a golden rose if he had.
Still I was set upon the idea of the memoirs, and at once started out to make a beginning. But a very serious obstacle met me. I found that my memory was of that order which retains only the most useless rubbish, while all recollections of those charming episodes — those delightful experiences which I, no doubt, shared in common with others of my age and condition — had completely deserted me.
It was then that I bethought me of a friend, one of the reminiscent kind, whose “don’t-you-remembers” and “it-was-in-the-summer-of-seventy-sixes” had often startled me with their unerring precision and cocksureness. I sent for him. He came. He was delighted with my project.
“Memoirs!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together, “Capital idea! You want me to help you out? First rate notion of yours,” seating himself in the corner of the sofa. I had taken a seat at no great distance away, pencil and pad in hand, ready for business.
“What I want,” I told him, “is for you to spur my memory; remind me of all manner of pleasant little past events calculated to give sparkle to the pages of a memoir — so now!”
“Well,” he said, leaning with his elbows on his knees, “you’ve got to begin at the beginning. Let’s see: suppose you tell about the time I took you to— “
“These are not your memoirs; they are mine,” I reminded him rather coldly.
“Oh! all right. Then you might write of how you tore down the union flag from the front porch when the Yanks tied it up there; and of the night the prisoners escaped from the Gratiot street prison and hid in the lilac bushes, and we all — you all went out with lanterns— “
“You must think I want to write war papers, don’t you?”
“What do you want to write?”
“Why, I don’t know exactly. I want to tell of interesting and entertaining things; whether I received much attention, and whether I was a great belle or not; that sort of thing. Do you remember if I ever met any people of distinction?”
“Distinction?”
“Yes. Grand dukes or anything of that kind. — Didn’t I dance with the Prince of Wales somewhere about ‘70 at the Home Circle?”
“Prince of Wales never went to the Home Circle. The Prince of Wales never came over here in the seventies. It must have been some one else you met. It’d be kind of funny, though, to tell about the night you went to Mrs. Maffitt’s party on Sixth and Olive, and slipped down the stone steps trying to get away from— “
“I thought Barr’s was on Sixth and Olive.”
“Oh! did you? No; it used to be, but it’s been moved out to 44th and West Pine.”
I saw he was offended. But indeed, for the life of me I can never remember “the old church that used to stand on the corner where the Skylark building now stands,” and so forth. For all I know to the contrary the Union Trust has always been where it is now; and it seems to me that nothing but the Century building has ever stood on Seventh and Olive. Or is it Seventh and Olive? I tried to conciliate my friend.
“Wouldn’t it be rather interesting to relate the story of that drive, in which the horses ran away and threw me down an embankment?”
“It wasn’t you; it was your cousin who was thrown down the embankment.”
His face was settling into a gloomy cast. I quietly laid aside my pencil and pad.
“I guess you’d better stick to inventions,” he suggested.
“I guess I had,” I replied submissively.
Speaking of editors — though I don’t know that I was speaking of them. I must have been thinking of them in connection with Sallie Britton’s memoirs, and wondering whether she ever “submitted” them for publication, or how she did it. But editors are really a singular class of men; they have such strange and incomprehensible ways with them.
I once submitted a story to a prominent New York editor, who returned it promptly with the observation that “the public is getting very tired of that sort of thing.” I felt very sorry for the public; but I wasn’t willing to take one man’s word for it, so I clapped the offensive document into an envelope and sent it away again — this time to a well-known Boston editor.
“I am delighted with the story,” read the letter of acceptance, which came a few weeks later, “and so, I am sure, will be our readers.” (!)
When an editor says a thing like that it is at his own peril. I at once sent him another tale, thinking thereby to increase his delight and add to it ten-fold.
“Can you call this a story, dear madam?” he asked when he sent it back. “Really, there seems to me to be no story at all; what is it all about?” I could see his pale smile.
It was getting interesting, like playing at battledore and shuttlecock. Off went the would-be story by the next mail to the New York editor — the one who so considerately gauged the ennui of the public.
“It is a clever and excellent piece of work,” he wrote me; “the story is well told.” I wonder if the editor, the writer, and the public are ever at one.
VI
We are told that Macaulay was in the habit of swallowing a book almost at a gulp; just as the ogres used to swallow little children, clothes and all. One longs for a like super-human capacity when confronted by the bewildering and tempting variety of wares which the book-stands are offering us to-day. Among the magazines there are always the old reliables. We almost know beforehand what they are going to say. In all events, we know in advance that, while they are going to entertain us, possibly to amuse and instruct us, they are not going to shock us. They hold no surprises in reserve; we should very likely resent the innovation if they were to take upon themselves any such new departure.
It is to the newer booklets, chiplets, clap-traplets, that we must turn for sensations; there we may get them in abundance. These candidates for popular favor are employing every device, legitimate and illegitimate, to attract notice to themselves. They appear in every imaginable form, color and garb, mincing before the public, and they make their little bows. Some of them are like ladies with painted cheeks, whose beauty is not even skin deep. But many of them are worth knowing. They come from the new land where “the modern” holds sway. If we keep them company for awhile we may find ourselves a little blown and dizzy from the unaccustomed pace, but, on the whole, invigorated.
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. of Boston and New York have recently published a new book by Joel Chandler Harris, entitled Sister Jane.
This is a story which has come perilously near being ruined by a plot. It is astonishing that Mr. Harris has not discovered at this late day that he has nothing to do with clap-trap. It doubtless often happens that a writer, when he happens to be a man of genius, is unconscious of his own power. His work is so wholly the result of impulse, so natural an expression of himself, that he accepts it as a matter of course, along with other spiritual or physical phenomena of his being. So, on the other hand, is he unable to realize his limitations, or to recognize the extent of his failure when he adopts an external suggestion and tries to make it his own.
In Sister Jane Mr. Harris has given us another confirmation of his genius; not alone by what he has done,
but as well by that which he has failed to accomplish. If he were not a genius — if he were simply a clever craftsman — he might have taken that lamentable plot and made something of it. A child is stolen; a child who exists for no other reason than to be stolen. He is spirited away for purposes of revenge by a man created for that special rôle of abduction. There is a hypocritical villain, the father of an illegitimate child, who is talked about all through the book, yet whose acquaintance we make only in the final pages. There is everything weak, unjointed, melodramatic about the plot. Absurdities accumulate and grow into a tower of folly which should be an everlasting reproach. Pages might be written concerning Mr. Harris’ mistake in this direction. But it is pleasanter to talk of Mr. Harris’ achievements in Sister Jane.
A singular feature of the book is that the real characters in it have absolutely nothing to do with the furtherance of the plot; they are the author’s own, and every one of them is a masterpiece of his creative genius. Sister Jane herself; William Warnum, who tells the story; Mrs. Bishears, Mandy, Jincy Meadows, Brother Cosby and Grandsir Roach, Free Betsey and the two old demented sisters; the baby Klibs and even the negro Mose, are people who will live so long as creatures of the imagination continue to haunt our fancy.
There are chapters in Sister Jane that stand out like flaming torches. “Free Betsey Runs the Cards” is a gem; as well as “Two Old Friends and Another.” “Jincy in the New Ground” is a little bit of fiction whose poetry and poignant charm Mr. Harris himself has never surpassed.
Mr. Harris is not a novelist. He has not the constructive faculty that goes to the making of even the mediocre novel; while he lacks the “vision” which gives us the great novel. But he has the quaint and fanciful imagination of the poet; he has the power to depict character in its outward manifestations, unsurpassed by any American writer of the present day and equalled by few.
Let us hope that he will tell us more of those old-time people in their quiet, sleepy corner of Middle Georgia. We shall not demand a plot; just a record of their plain and simple lives is all we want.
There is so much being said now-a-days about mental energy and its compelling force or quality, that one cannot avoid at times taking the subject under consideration.
The other day the thoughts of millions of people were at one and the same moment occupied with the great fist fight, its participants and its results. I could not help wondering whether this accumulated mental force, projected at a given time upon a common object, could fail to affect in some way the men against whom it was directed. I have had this notion before, in regard to events which have claimed the simultaneous attention of a whole nation. It seems to me, for instance, that the united impulse of horror which went out from millions of souls must in some subtle way have reached Guiteau’s inner consciousness, after his crime, and made itself felt. But this is something for the psychologists; I had better stop, or I shall have them laughing at me.
Contextual Pieces
While visiting the St. Louis World’s Fair on August 20, 1904, Chopin suffered a brain hemorrhage and died two days later, at the age of 54.
LIST OF ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
CONTENTS
From: The Literature of the Louisiana Territory, by Alexander Nicolas DeMenil, St. Louis News Company, 1904. Pages 257-259
From: The Critic, August 1899. Pages677-678
From: Library of Southern Literature, Alderman, Harris and Kent, Editors, Martin and Hoyt Company, 1909
From: Book Reviews, June 1894. Page 97.
From: The Writer, August 1894
From: The Alienist and Neurologist, April 1894. Page 303.
From: Belford’s Monthly and Democratic Review, September 1891. Page 120.
From: The Writer, November 1890. Page 259
From: The Nation, October 1, 1891. Page 264
From: The Literary World, December 20, 1890. Page 495
From: The Book Buyer, September 1899. Pages 122-123
From: Godey’s Magazine, April 1895, by Maibelle Justice. Page 432
From: The Nation, June 28, 1894. Page 488
From: The Outlook, April 14, 1894. Page 678
From: The Review of Reviews, May 1894. Page 625
From: The Literary News, May 1894. Pages 142-143
From: The Critic, May 5, 1894. Pages 299-300
From: Book News, September 1895. Pages 5-6
From: The Dial, August 1, 1899. By William Morton Payne Page 75
From: The Nation, August 3, 1899. Page 96
From: The Land of Sunshine, July 1899. By Chas. F. Lummis Page 120
From: The Outlook, June 3, 1899. Page 314
From: Public Opinion, June 22, 1899. Page 794
From: Public Opinion, August 17, 1899. Page 223
From: The Green Bag, August 1894. Page 392
From: Land of Sunshine, February, 1898. Page 135
From: The Atlantic Monthly, April 1894. Pages 558-559
From: The Nation, June 9, 1898. Page 446
From: The Interior, August 2, 1894. Page 987
From: The Reader Magazine, November 1904. Pages 700-701
From: Yale Literary Magazine, April 1894. Page 365
From: Their Day in Court, Percival Pollard, Neale Publishing Company, 1909, Pages 40-45
From: The Literature of the Louisiana Territory, by Alexander Nicolas DeMenil, St. Louis News Company, 1904. Pages 257-259
KATE CHOPIN
Mrs. Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis. She descends, on her mother’s side, from several of the old French families of primitive St. Louis, and her father, Captain Thomas O’Flaherty, was a wealthy merchant of St. Louis. She graduated at the Sacred Heart Convent, and a few years later married Oscar Chopin of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. They lived on his plantation until his death which occurred several years ago. Her first literary venture, “At Fault”, is a good, homely story, not particularly exciting as to the plot, and somewhat crude at times, but still affording pleasant reading; in no way did it foreshadow her future work. It was published in 1890, in St. Louis.
Her next book, “Bayou Folk” (Boston, 1894), consists of a number of short stories and studies of Creole life. The facility and exactness with which Mrs. Chopin handles the Creole dialect, and the fidelity of her descriptions of that strange, remote life in the Louisiana bayous, is remarkable. But she writes of (what she calls) her “own people “, for by inheritance of birth and by marriage, and I may add — by inclination, she is herself, a Creole.
Her stories are extremely interesting as studies of life. She has been compared to Mr. Cable, but no two writers could possibly traverse the same ground more at variance with each other. Her touch is far more deft than Mr. Cable’s; her insight is more femininely subtle (if I may use the word); pain, sorrow, affliction, humbled pride, rude heroism — enter more completely into her sympathies. She feels and suffers with her characters. Nor is this strange: she is herself (as I have said before) to the manor born. Not so Mr. Cable. I do not wish to detract one tittle from the just praise I have given him elsewhere, but the soul of sympathy with which Mrs. Chopin overflows is wanting in his pages; we may smile with him, we may laugh with him — even grieve with him — but we are forced to realize, nevertheless, that he lacks that touch of humanity that Brunetiere so justly and so eloquently praises in Thackeray and George Eliot. The critics have not as yet fully understood the excellence of Mrs. Chopin’s work.
I remember Mrs. Chopin, when almost a child, reading one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels! Of later years, she is as she was then, an omnivorous reader. She has a strong admiration for the late Guy de Maupassant, whose artistic methods she considers superior to those of any other French author of late days. She is not a “blue-stocking” — she has none of the manners, airs, affectations and eccentricities of the poseurs bleu. She has no fads, no serious purposes, no lesson to teach in life. She takes no notes, she has never, she declares, observed or studied people, places, or things, or conditions, or circumstances with a view of using them as l
iterary material. She is simply a bright, unaffected, unpresuming and womanly woman.
Mrs. Chopin has also published “A Night in Acadie” (Chicago, 1897) and “The Awakening” (Chicago, 1902) — the latter a novel. Another work from her pen will appear some time during 1904. She was born February 8, 1851; she has five sons and one daughter.
From: The Critic, August 1899. Pages677-678
Mrs. Kate Chopin, whose portrait is here given, was born in St. Louis in the early fifties. Her father was Thomas O’Flaherty, an Irish gentleman of prominence and wealth, who died when she was but a few years old. Her mother was the daughter of Wilson Faris of Virginia and Athenaise Charleville, whose ancestors were among the founders of St. Louis and old Kaskaskia. Mrs. Chopin was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent. She was an indifferent student with a mistaken belief that she possessed musical talent. At the age of nineteen she married Mr. Oscar
Chopin, a native of Louisiana, and lived during her married life in New Orleans and Natchitoches. After Mr. Chopin’s death she returned to St. Louis in 1885 with her children, and has lived there ever since. She never had an inclination to write until the year 1889. Her first effort was a novel of Louisiana life called “At Fault.” It was published in St. Louis in 1891 and had a local success. Her first short story, “A No-Account Creole,” was published in The Century. “Bayou Folk,” a volume of Creole tales, was published in 1894 by Messrs. Houghton, Mifllin, & Co. “A Night in Acadie” followed in 1897. Mrs. Chopin is said to avoid the society of literary and “bookish” people. She does not like to talk about her work. She writes seldom, but with great rapidity and little or no correction.
From: Library of Southern Literature, Alderman, Harris and Kent, Editors, Martin and Hoyt Company, 1909
Kate Chopin (1851-1904) by Leonidas Rutledge Whipple