The Devil’s Own Dear Son, 1949
Other literary forms
James Branch Cabell (KAB-uhl) was both prolific and versatile. In addition to his
many novels, he produced a volume of poetry titled From the Hidden Way (1916) and a play, The Jewel Merchants (pb. 1921). His short stories are collected in The Line of Love (1905), Gallantry (1907), Chivalry (1909), and The Certain Hour (1916). Included among his writings are critical volumes on his contemporaries Joseph Hergesheimer and
Ellen Glasgow; Taboo (1921), a satire dedicated to Cabell’s nemesis, John S. Sumner, who initiated obscenity charges against Cabell’s novel Jurgen; Some of Us (1930), a defense of the individualism of such writers as Elinor Wylie, Sinclair Lewis, and H. L.
Mencken; and The St. Johns (1943), a history of a Florida river written with A. J. Hanna, for Stephen Vincent Benét’s book series titled The Rivers of America.
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James Branch Cabell
(Library of Congress)
Perhaps Cabell’s most interesting volumes are those that illuminate his life and literary development. He wrote two epistolary volumes: Special Delivery (1933), which presents both his conventional responses to letters he received and the unconventional replies he would have preferred to send, and Ladies and Gentlemen (1934), a collection of addresses to dead historical figures—from Solomon to George Washington, from Pocahontas to
Madame de Pompadour—who have inspired myths and legends. He explores the past of
his native region and its impact on his writings in his trilogy “Virginians Are Various,”
consisting of Let Me Lie (1947), Quiet, Please (1952), and As I Remember It (1955). Providing readers with insight into Cabell’s art are Beyond Life (1919), which clarifies his values, literary precedents, and thematic concerns; These Restless Heads (1932), a discussion of creativity based on the four seasons of the year; and Straws and Prayer-Books (1924), an explanation of his reasons for writing The Biography of the Life of Manuel.
Two volumes of Cabell’s letters have been published: Between Friends: Letters of James Branch Cabell and Others (1962), edited by his second wife, Margaret Freeman Cabell, 43
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and Padraic Colum; and The Letters of James Branch Cabell (1975), edited by Edward Wagenknecht. His manuscripts and memorabilia are in the James Branch Cabell Collections at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Achievements
James Branch Cabell’s aesthetic individualism—as expressed in his highly artificial
style, his loose, episodic structure, and his peculiar synthesis of romance and comedy, idealism and cynicism, mythology and personal experience—has limited both his popular
and critical appeal. As Arvin R. Wells observes in Jesting Moses: A Study in Cabellian Comedy (1962), “It seems fair to say that rarely has a serious literary artist had so little luck in finding a responsive, judicious, and articulate audience.” The essays, short stories, and books that Cabell published from 1901 to 1919 received only a small readership along
with generally negative reviews, although both Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt
praised his collection of chivalric tales, The Line of Love. Most readers, advocates of realism, found his works too romantic, whereas those with a taste for romance complained
that Cabell was too abstruse.
In 1920, when obscenity charges were brought against Jurgen, Cabell found himself in the public eye, perceived as a valiant iconoclast battling the forces of puritanical repression. Sales of Jurgen skyrocketed, and Cabell enjoyed praise from such respected literary figures as Vernon Louis Parrington, Carl Van Doren, H. L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis,
who acknowledged Cabell’s achievement in his Nobel Prize address of 1930. Suddenly, in
critical studies, literary histories, and anthologies, Cabell was elevated to, as the critic Joe Lee Davis has put it, “the rank of a ‘classic’ and an ‘exotic’ in the movement of spiritual liberation led by H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, Eugene O’Neill, and Sinclair Lewis.”
The public fanfare of the 1920’s, however, inspired primarily by the eroticism in
Cabell’s works, proved to be short-lived—not to the surprise of Cabell, who, in These Restless Heads, predicted the decline of his literary generation. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, Cabell was viewed as a trifling talent, rooted to the 1920’s and to his native Virginia. His aestheticism displeased the ethical neohumanists; his escapism annoyed the Marxists.
The New Critics and mythic critics paid him scant attention. In the 1950’s, three major literary historians—Edward Wagenknecht, Edd Winfield Parks, and Edmund Wilson—
called for a reevaluation of Cabell’s career, but they did little to change public opinion.
Many of Cabell’s books have been out of print at various times, although a late twentieth century surge of interest in fantasy literature brought some attention to his work, which has come to be appreciated primarily by a coterie of scholars and graduate students.
Biography
Born on April 14, 1879, in Richmond, Virginia, James Branch Cabell grew up there as
a southern gentleman. His parents—Robert Gamble Cabell II, a physician, and Anne
Branch—were both from distinguished southern families. Cabell’s paternal great-grand-
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father was a governor of Virginia; his paternal grandfather held two claims to fame, having been a schoolmate of Edgar Allan Poe at the English and Classical School in Richmond
and later a neighbor and the personal physician of General Robert E. Lee. On his mother’s side of the family, Cabell was related through marriage to a number of prominent Virginia families and was cousin to a governor of Maryland. Fostering Cabell’s aristocratic pride still further was his “mammy,” Mrs. Louisa Nelson, who, in her several decades of service in the Cabell household, doted on James and encouraged him to consider himself a
privileged member of society.
Cabell’s outstanding intellect asserted itself early. He performed brilliantly at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, which he attended from 1894 to 1898. His pro-
fessors suggested that he revise a sophomore paper titled “The Comedies of William
Congreve” for publication and later asked him to teach courses in French and Greek at the college. The only blemish on Cabell’s academic career was a scandal during his senior
year. One of his professors was accused of having homosexual relations with his students; Cabell, because he had been friends with the man, was briefly implicated. The unpleasant episode had positive repercussions, however, for in wandering about Williamsburg alone
and troubled, Cabell met Ellen Glasgow, who had come to town to research the back-
ground for a novel. She offered him sympathy, and thus began a lifelong friendship. Soon the charges against Cabell were dropped for lack of evidence, and he graduated with
highest honors.
After his graduation, Cabell pursued writing both as a vocation and an avocation. He
served as a copyholder on the Richmond Times in 1898, then spent two years working for the New York Herald, and in 1901 he worked for the Richmond News. For the next decade, he worked as a genealogist, traveling around the United States, England, Ireland, and
France to examine archives. Not only did this occupation result in two volumes of the
Branch family history— Branchiana (1907), a record of the Branch family in Virginia, and Branch of Abingdon (1911), a record of the Branch family in England—but it also prepared Cabell for his future literary endeavors in tracing the lineage of a character
through twenty-two subsequent generations. During that same time, Cabell wrote several
novels and steadily produced short stories, which
he contributed to such periodicals as
The Smart Set, Collier’s Weekly, Redbook, Lippincott’s, and Harper’s Monthly. In 1911, Cabell, disappointed by his lack of acclaim as a writer, took a position in coal-mining operations in West Virginia; in 1913, he abandoned the experiment and returned to
Richmond to resume work as a genealogist.
On November 8, 1913, at the age of thirty-four, Cabell gave up what had been a care-
free bachelorhood, filled with romantic intrigues, to marry Rebecca Priscilla Bradley
Shepard, a widow with five children. Marriage proved mutually satisfying to Cabell and
Priscilla. He enjoyed the domesticity of his new lifestyle, including the rearing of their son Ballard Hartwell; she delighted in performing the literary and social duties that came with being his wife. Their thirty-five-year union was marked by undying affection and loyalty.
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Literary prominence, or perhaps one should say notoriety, came to Cabell in 1920
when John S. Sumner, the executive secretary of the New York Society for the Suppres-
sion of Vice, seized the plates and copies of Cabell’s novel Jurgen and accused the publishing company, McBride, of violating the antiobscenity statutes of the New York State
penal code. Sumner’s action proved ill-advised, for it only increased the public’s interest in Cabell’s writings during the two and a half years before the obscenity trial was finally held. On October 19, 1922, after a three-day trial, the jury acquitted McBride, and Cabell emerged as a celebrity.
During the 1920’s, Cabell took a more active role as a literary leader and was instru-
mental, along with Ellen Glasgow, in making the nation aware of Richmond as a literary
center. While writing books with great regularity (during the 1920’s, he published seven novels, one play, and several works of short fiction and nonfiction), Cabell also entertained and corresponded with a number of important literary figures, including Sinclair
Lewis, Hugh Walpole, and Carl Van Vechten. In addition, he served as a writer and guest
editor for The Reviewer, Richmond’s impressive contribution to the vogue of little magazines. As active as Cabell was on the literary scene, he was still able to continue his career as a genealogist, working for the Virginia Chapter of the Sons of the Revolution and other historical societies, as well as serving as editor of the Virginia War History Commission.
The last decades of Cabell’s life were anticlimactic, fraught with physical ailments and an increasing disillusionment with the American reading public. With the advent of the
Great Depression, his literary fame seemed to weaken and then die. From 1932 to 1935,
Cabell—like Sherwood Anderson, George Jean Nathan, Eugene O’Neill, and Theodore
Dreiser—attempted to rekindle the vital skepticism of the 1920’s, serving as editor of the American Spectator; he soon realized, however, that his efforts to enlighten the public were useless. In the mid-1930’s, Cabell suffered from repeated attacks of pneumonia, and Priscilla developed severe arthritis; thus, they frequently sought relief in the warm climate of St. Augustine, Florida. There, Priscilla died of heart failure on March 29, 1949. Her death left Cabell feeling bitter, lost, and angry, but he continued to write steadily. In 1950, he regained some of his former zest for life when he decided to wed Margaret Waller Freeman, a member of the Richmond literati whose acquaintance he had made years earlier
while writing for The Reviewer. Cabell died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 5, 1958, in Richmond.
Analysis
James Branch Cabell’s art rests on a paradox. On one hand, the author contends that
man is idealistic and must therefore create dreams to sustain himself. On the other, he
mocks man’s tendency “to play the ape to his dreams”—that is, to seek the unattainable
foolishly. Manipulating the polarities of romance and comedy, Cabell responded to the
predominant intellectual trend of the early twentieth century—naturalism. From a cosmic
perspective, he had no difficulty accepting the premise that man is like a bit of flotsam in a 46
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deterministic universe, subject to environmental forces but unable to control or under-
stand them. From a humanistic point of view, however, he could not tolerate the limita-
tions that naturalism imposed on the human mind. For Cabell, man does not survive be-
cause he adapts to biological, social, or economic forces, but rather because he persists in believing in the products of his own imagination—what Cabell terms “dynamic illusions.” These illusions, according to Cabell, emanate from the demiurge, or psyche, yet
they are rooted in man’s primitive, animal instincts. Their source of energy is the libido.
Cabell’s protagonists thus move between two realms of experience: They are romantic
questers after ideal beauty, perfection, and salvation; they are also comic bumblers whose lusts, vanities, and misconceptions entangle them in a web of complexities. Cabell’s narratives follow a Hegelian pattern. His thesis is that man desires to escape from the dull, routine world of actuality. His antithesis is that such a desire can never be attained; disillusionment is inevitable. In the synthesis, however, man achieves a degree of satisfaction.
He learns that his ideals are illusions but also that they should be cherished, for in the realm of the imagination, dreams themselves have a reality.
Cabell’s background explains his propensity for blending the romantic and the comic.
Quite early, he developed a love for myth and legend. As a child, he delighted in such
books as Old Greek Stories Simply Told, Stories of Old Rome, Book of Bible Stories, and Stories of the Days of King Arthur. Cabell gained a strong sense of aristocratic pride—an appreciation of the southern characteristics of chivalry and gallantry—yet he was no
dreamy-eyed romantic. He saw the ironic underside of life. In growing up, he heard frank gossip, as well as heroic tales, from his elders. In college, Cabell became interested in the Restoration comedy of manners, which heightened his awareness of the hypocrisies and
absurdities of human behavior. Such weaknesses became more immediately apparent
when, as a bachelor in his twenties and early thirties, he vacationed at the Virginia resort of Rockbridge Alum. There, he witnessed and participated in affairs that assumed the facade of chaste, genteel encounters but were actually indulgences in lust. From his various experiences, Cabell developed a dichotomous concept of the artist, appropriate to his blending of romance and comedy. The artist assumes an exalted status, painting beautiful visions of life as it ought to be. Ironically, however, because of this detached, godlike perspective, skepticism intrudes. The world that the artist portrays becomes a caricature; it mocks and contradicts the idealistic presentation. For Cabell, the ideal and the real coexist.
The Biography of the Life of Manuel
Cabell’s major literary achievement is his eighteen-volume The Biography of the Life of Manuel, which he wished readers to regard as a single book. In 1915, Cabell conceived the idea of bringing together his writings into one vast architectural construct, and for the next fifteen years, he strove to achieve his plan: revising published works, deciding on a logical arrangement, and writing new tales and romances to clarify his design. The result was the Storisende Edition of The Works of James Branch Cabell, bound in green and 47
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gold. Cabell’s magnum opus represents an ingenious application of his genealogical tal-
ents to the realm of fiction. Spanning seven centuries and moving from the imaginary me-
dieval realm of Poictesme to modern Virginia, it celebrates the life force passed on by
Manuel t
o his descendants.
The design of The Biography of the Life of Manuel is best viewed in musical terms.
Whether one considers it to be a fugue or a sonata, it revolves on three themes and their variations. These themes are three philosophies of life: the chivalrous, the gallant, and the poetic. The chivalrous attitude views life as a testing; dominated by the will, it represents an ideal tradition in which men revere first God and then noble women. Quite the opposite, the gallant attitude views life as a toy; its social principle is hedonism. This attitude emphasizes the intelligence and is thus skeptical. Celebrating both chivalry and gallantry, the final attitude, the poetic, views life as raw material out of which it creates something that transcends life. It is controlled by the imagination.
These attitudes of the chivalrous, the gallant, and the poetic determine the structure of Cabell’s work. In Beyond Life, the prologue to The Biography of the Life of Manuel, he defines them. Then, in Figures of Earth, Cabell presents the life of Manuel of Poictesme, who at various times is affected by all three codes, and follows it with The Silver Stallion, which traces the development of the legend of Manuel the Redeemer. The fourth volume—composed of Domnei and The Music from Behind the Moon—treats one aspect of the chivalric code: woman worship. Cabell then elaborates on the subject in his short-story collection titled Chivalry. He next examines the gallant attitude in Jurgen; inserts The Line of Love, which treats all three attitudes; then returns to gallantry in The High Place and the short-story collection The Certain Hour. The next four volumes move to the modern world: The Cords of Vanity presents Robert Townsend, a gallant; From the Hidden Way offers Townsend’s verses; The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck portrays a chivalrous character; and The Eagle’s Shadow examines the poet. Finally, The Biography of the Life of Manuel circles back on itself, as the soul of Felix Kennaston, the protagonist of The Cream of the Jest, journeys back to Poictesme through his dreams. Cabell’s vast design concludes with an epilogue, Straws and Prayer-Books, and Townsend of Lichfield, containing notes and addenda.
Figures of Earth
Figures of Earth, one of Cabell’s finest novels, follows its author’s typical tripartite pattern of quest, ensuing disillusionment, and final transcendence, as it traces the career of the swineherd Manuel. Subtitled A Comedy of Appearances, it is a complex allegorical work peopled with supernatural and preternatural beings who reside in the imaginary medieval land of Poictesme. The tale begins when Miramon Lluagor, the master of dreams,
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