CHAPTER VIII

TALES OF THE SOIL

1. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT.-The art of depicting everyday life, with its specific local color, was cultivated in Scotland with some success as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. In America the realistic portrayal of provincial life and the use of dialect dates back to the beginnings of her imaginative literature; Catherine Maria Sedgwick's "A New England Tale," a story which is designated as the forerunner of the whole species, appeared in 1822. But as in England, where it required a master of the stamp of George Eliot to gain appreciation and popularity for this form of art, so in America it was not until the appearance of a creative writer of the abounding vigor, the sensitive temperament, and the varied experience of Bret Harte, that the literature of provincialism became an established fact. "The Luck of Roaring Camp" (1869), a bold piece of impressionist open-air painting of the life of the

California gold-seekers-a work of the most absolute directness, without perspective, almost without sifting of its material—marks the beginning not of American local-color literature in general, but of that relating to sections other than the Eastern States. For the student of comparative literature it is a particularly noteworthy fact that the pioneer of provincial realism, this very Bret Harte, was a poet of the first water, a littérateur of fastidiously delicate taste who really felt himself exiled, as it were, among the untamed children of nature in the California gold-diggings. He was delighted with the offer of a chair of modern literature (1870); he left America without regret when he was appointed consul at Krefeld (1878); and in London, which he chose as his permanent abode in 1885, he consorted with the best society. His novels and tales, whose substance is taken from the Sierras, were, with the exception of two, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," all written from memory.

Another pioneer of realistic local fiction was Edward Eggleston (1837-1902), whose "Hoosier Schoolmaster" appeared in 1871. In this first effort Eggleston, who had made Taine's theory

of environment his own, describes his own experiences; in conscious contrast with the method of idealizing embellishment. It reminds the German reader of Pestalozzi's narrative writings, and still more of Jeremias Gotthelf. And now there follow in rapid succession the works of the great American masters of local fiction, almost every state being represented by a number of story-tellers.

But brief as is the span of time that separates us from Bret Harte, the development of this species of American art has been extraordinary -almost as remarkable as that of the society depicted. The writers of the seventies and eighties content themselves with rough outlines; they give to happenings and descriptions the priority over psychological analysis. With Bret Harte color and mood, with Eggleston environment, are the most essential things; the style is as direct and simple as the human nature. The farther we get away from these beginnings, the finer do we find the lines, the more careful the psychology, the more distinguished the style. George Washington Cable (born 1844) is already far removed from the style of Bret Harte and Eggleston; the whole distance between 1869 and the close of the cen

tury is to be seen in James Lane Allen (born 1849) who must on that account be presented somewhat more fully.

The work upon which his reputation chiefly rests is "The Choir Invisible," which appeared in 1897. The title itself shows that a poet with the literary spirit is addressing fastidious tastes. `What does it suggest to a simple mind? Assuredly something ethereal, something perhaps from the other shore, spirits or angels. The book, however, does not concern itself in the slightest with the world from which "no traveller returns." On the contrary it is a presentiment of the most stirring life imaginable, the heroic age of the pioneers of Kentucky. And the misleading title, a concession to the learned snobbery of our time, which acts as if it had read everything and forgotten nothing, is taken from a poem of George Eliot's:

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self.

The invisible choir of the title is the band of heroes whose names are not recorded by history,

and yet who in their quiet way have made America the grandiose spectacle which it is today. A historical novel, then? No; but a little heroic epic in prose, a brief episode in the life of two noble beings, just as befits an epic, the romance of two strong natures who are too proud to steal their happiness, and not modern enough to relegate the ideas of mine and thine to the lumber room. The single man and the married woman remain separated; that is the whole extent of their defeat. Otherwise they are victorious all along the line; victorious over wilderness and savages, over malice and stupidity, over temptation and their own hearts. The book exhales youth and strength. The story opens with a half-tempting, half-chilling day of early spring, and like a northern May, which promises all yet withholds all, does the whole book affect our spirit.

The strongest side of the American writers of local fiction-in contrast with the great cosmopolitan novelists of America like Howells and James is their narrow horizon, their quite childlike, unsubdued nature; it gives them a spiritual kinship to the naïve poets of the ancient world. Allen's "Choir Invisible" is not the first or the only work of this kind, but it is the