USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Indiana from its exploration to 1922, Vol II > Part 41
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is autobiographical in the sense that Hall's New Pur- chase or Mark Twain's Roughing It is. Eggleston never experienced this life, was not one of its actors, but only an observer. He held somewhat the same relation to his literary family that Dickens did to his, although of course the personal experiences of the two authors were different. They caricatured society rather than described it. It is further to be kept in mind that the observations on which the books were founded were those of a youth under six- teen and that the impressions there formed were not used until twenty years later. No critical historian but would reject such evidence as unreliable. More- over there is nothing more delusive to a mere observ- er, judging character, than outward appearance. Certainly no childish observer would have chosen Socrates as the wise man in the symposium.
On the other hand the work of Edward Eggleston is not, for that reason, worthless to history or to the history of culture. His honesty and literary power
this world. The scene of the story is in Hooppole County, Indiana, a locality which we hope the traveler would now have some dif- ficulty in finding, and in a neighborhood settled, apparently, by poor whites from Virginia and Kentucky, sordid Pennsylvania Dutchmen, and a sprinkling of cute dishonest Yankees." -- Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XXIX, 363.
The same result is seen in the following quotation from C. F. Richardson: "The very titles of his works-The Hoosier School- master, The Circuit Rider, The Mystery of Metropolisville, Roxy- Illuminate the scenes and characters described. The scenes are rough and the characters 'tough,' in the better sense and some- times in the worse, but the fidellty with which youth and age in the backwoods are painted makes the books, like so many other American works, at least valuable essays toward that full delinea- tion of the whole country which our novelists seem surely, though irregularly, to be making." C. F. Richardson, American Literature, II, 422.
These reviewers perhaps knew as much about pioneer life in Indiana as they did about the mound-builders, certainly not more.
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are unquestioned. What he has given in his writings are the outward forms, expressions, the trappings or husks of pioneer life along the north bank of the Ohio river. The physical portrait is well drawn and is not without value, but the sympathy that dignifies the characters of Hay and Riley is lacking in Eggleston. The bare feet and patched pants no doubt were prom- inent but they were not of the essence of a south.Indi- ana Hoosier before the Civil war. The aged and fail- ing myth about the emigration of the "poor whites" from the south across the Ohio river has done yeo- man service. It has borne for years the characteri- zation, tough, rude, lawless, ignorant, sordid, de- bauched and predatory. When informed of these qualities, gratuitously, by the smug critic the aver- age citizen of that region smiles benevolently and says : "Much obleeged" and goes on about his work.
In the broader field of literature Edward Eggles- ton takes high rank. He was an early realist, one of the very first in the west. In character drawing, scene painting, dramatization and, in fact, all the elements that go to make up the novelist, there is lit- tle lacking in his best books. These qualities have made him, in Indiana, the best known of our novelists.
Mr. Eggleston spent his last years writing his- tory. His labors in this field were too brief to pro- duce much result. The Beginners of a Nation and the Transit of Civilization are readable and accurate but are not sufficient to entitle the author to rank among the first-rate historians of the United States. Mr. Eggleston died September 4, 1902.16
16 For a study of Mr. Eggleston outside his own prefaces see Meredith Nicholson, The Hoosiers, 134; The Provincial Amer- ican, 35; the Forum, X, 279 (Nov. 1890) ; George Cary Eggleston, The First of the Hoosiers (a biography of Edward Eggleston) ; the Nation, XIV, 44; Review of Reviews, XXVI, 448; Scribner's (Sept. 1873), VI, 561; the Atlantic, XXIX, 363 and XXX, 746
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George Cary Eggleston was two years younger than Edward. The circumstances of their early life were similar. However, after studying awhile in Asbury university, he turned to his relatives in Vir- ginia, became a southerner in the Civil war and after- ward took up literary work in New York City. Only two of his numerous books deal with Indiana themes. The First of the Hoosiers, a biography of himself and brother Edward, and The Last of the Flatboats, a story described by its title.17 Neither of these has enough literary or historical merit to keep it alive. A number of other writers of local note lived around Vevay and Madison while the Egglestons and Du- monts flourished, but none of them has attained any considerable reputation.
A combination of circumstances, chief of which was Wabash college, developed a literary center at Crawfordsville. While not drawing so largely on Indiana history for their themes, the Crawfordsville writers have been more truly Hoosiers in their lives. The senior and leader of the group was General Lew Wallace, who is usually conceded to be either the greatest or the poorest of the Indiana novelists. He was a man of wide interests and experience. His father was governor of Indiana, a representative in congress and one of the most eloquent of the early lawyers of the state. His maternal grandfather, John Test, sat in congress two terms, and was later distinguished as a leading politician and lawyer. At Brookville, where Lew Wallace was born, April 10, 1827, at Covington, and later at Indianapolis, his education was as good as could be had, though he
(reviews by W. D. Howells) ; aiso an appreciation by Nicholson, Atlantic, XC, 804. These are sufficient to show his rating by critics.
17 G. C. Eggleston, Recollections of a Varied Life; Bookman, XXXI.
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never attended college. He served with distinction in the Mexican and Civil wars, after which he settled down to the practice of law; or tried to, for a con- trolling desire to do literary work had long before manifested itself.
Before the war General Wallace had begun a novel which he named The Fair God, based on Pres- cott's Conquest of Mexico. This was finished in 1873 and carried to a Boston publishing house, Osgood and Company. It appears that no American review- ers undertook to pass judgment on the novel when it appeared. Nothing resembling it had been offered to the reading public and there seemed no way to measure its merits or predict its reception. The story itself closely follows Prescott; there is such a for- midable array of unpronouncable names; the whole story is so prodigal of blood and slaughter, was such an ugly duckling looking creation, that its favorable acceptance by the reading public might well be doubted. It was,ten or fifteen years before the novel reached its maximum popularity, though it was im- mediately popular in London.
In the meantime General Wallace was laying his literary plans on a more ambitious scale. He ran- sacked the Congressional library for books on Jew- ish history. He had determined to clear his own mind on the subject of the divinity of Christ. For this reason he wrote Ben Hur. From the standpoint of the book stalls this is the present high water mark of Indiana novels. The other novel, The Prince of India, 1893, did not attain the popularity of Ben Hur. He had worked on The Prince of India since 1886 and in conception and execution it would seem to merit as high praise as its predecessor. These, together with a few shorter articles, such as The Boyhood of Christ, 1892, fill up the measure of his work. He had
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well-nigh completed his Autobiography at the time of his death, February 15, 1905.
Although Ben Hur is the most widely-read novel written in America since the Civil war, neither it nor its author has ever found favor with the profes- sional critics. Neither of the standard American lit- erary reviews seems to have noticed either Ben Hur or The Fair God when they were published. In fact, The Fair God lay dormant for ten years and only came to life in the light of its successor, Ben Hur. Wallace was not a Bohemian in habits, but associated with politicians, statesmen and soldiers. Conse- quently his literary art was not to the liking of the craft. In fact, when he brought his team out on the literary race track the judges all fled from their posts. His prose has strength rather than beauty. The great scenes are separated by long stretches of mo- notonous commonplace. Whatever his value as an artist, he has found a large audience.18 The subjects which Wallace has treated have no relation to Indiana and will not, therefore, be discussed at length here.
Very different from either Eggleston or Wallace was James Maurice Thompson, son and grandson of Baptist preachers. He was born near Brookville, Indiana, September 9, 1844. His mother was Dutch,
18 The best reference is Lew Wallace, an Autobiography; Nich- olson, The Hoosiers, 180; Mary H. Krout, "Personal Reminiscences of Lew Wallace," in Harper's Weekly, IL, 406. The standard texts on American literature contain only the briefest mention, Charles F. Richardson, American Literature, II, 441, has this: "Meanwhile two hundred thousand copies of Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ, have been distributed among pleased readers, to whom its religious suggestions and its occasionally vivid pictures have been most welcome, though the construction and-to me at least-dull literary style are of the amateur rather than the true historical novelist." This is the only mention made of Wallace and his work in a book containing thirty-five pages devoted to Cooper and one to Edward Eggleston.
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his father was Scotch-Irish, both were well educated and prominent, and both were of old Revolutionary families. The ministerial duties of the father led him up and down the Ohio valley, and finally landed him in a wild glen among the hills of north Georgia. This life in the wilderness was the determining influence in the education of the son. He was naturally a poet; became a poetic scientist, practiced law as a profes- sion; was a civil engineer, and will be remembered as a writer of prose. His education, largely literary, emphasized these qualities. More than the Eggles- tons or Wallace, he had the temper of an artist. His life in the woods gave him an appetite for backwoods stories. In this field lay the materials for his three books dealing with Indiana subjects.
The first of the three, in 1876, was a collection of short stories dealing with characters and scenes in the vicinity of Crawfordsville. These stories at- tracted some attention locally but little elsewhere. The Witchery of Archery followed in 1878 and first brought the writer into notice. While practicing law in Crawfordsville was his occupation, he usually spent the winter in the south writing novels. In 1886 he produced A Banker of Bankerville, a Crawfords- ville theme. The story is of a speculator who rapidly acquired wealth, endowed, or assisted financially, colleges and churches with other people's money, "blew up in the home stretch" and disappeared. The author very modestly introduces himself as "Mil- ford," the honest lawyer.
In Indiana by far his best known story is Alice of Old Vincennes, 1900, a historical novel dealing with the capture of Vincennes by George Rogers Clark; in fact it is so historical in many places that it is thread- bare. The author pried open the joints of Clark's narrative here and there and inserted stories gath-
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ered from a collection furnished him in Vincennes.19 Although it is a thrilling story of rough frontier ex- periences the volume has little literary merit. Three- fourths of the space is devoted to a plain historical narrative which is spoiled for history by the love story grafted on. As a poet and critic, Thompson also earned some recognition. His views on criticism are contained in a small volume entitled Ethics of Literary Art (1893).20 He contributed many articles to the magazines, the Cosmopolitan, Atlantic, Cen- tury, Outing, Critic, and especially to the Independ- ent, of which he was an editorial staff correspondent. One of these articles, "An Archer on the Kankakee," has especial value for Indiana, being an account of a trip, while state geologist, over the region which LaSalle explored in 1679. He died at Crawfords- ville, February 15, 1901.
From Crawfordsville also came Meredith Nichol- son, one of the most widely-known Indiana literary men at present. Like all literary men of Indiana he comes of good stock and enjoyed a first-class educa- tion. His ancestors were from the south and came with the great migration by way of Kentucky; his education was received in the society of Crawfords- ville and Indianapolis, supplemented by a degree from Wabash. He listened to General Wallace, Ben-
19 These stories, together with a number of others, had been gathered by Margaret O'Flynn and Ida Lusk, who were preparing them for publication when Thompson's novel appeared. Mary Hannah Krout had just completed a manuscript entitled "On the Wea Trail" on the same subject when Alice of Old Vincennes came from the press. Although the two authors lived In the same town it seems neither knew the other was working on the subject.
20 The best critique on Maurice Thompson is William M. Baskerville, Southern Writers, I, 89-136; Meredith Nicholson, The Hoosiers, 199; for a critical study of his work consult the Inde- pendent from 1890 to 1902. No collection of his works has been published
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jamin Harrison, Thomas A. Hendricks, Joseph E. McDonald, as well as the cracker barrel philosophers of the seventies. Finally he was initiated into the secrets of Hoosier character by James Whitcomb Riley. He is as well acquainted with the rough side and the shortcomings of western life as was Eggles- ton, but unlike the latter, has never lost sympathy nor hope. Even ten years of newspaper work has not wrecked his literary health, nor spoiled his temper.
He entered the field of literature by way of poetry, Short Flights, contributed occasionally to the newspapers and collected into a volume in 1891. After ten years of reportorial and other writing for newspapers, Mr. Nicholson published The Hoosier, an appreciation of the literary work done by Indian- ians. The little volume, both historical and critical in the better sense of both terms, in its sane, modest estimates has done much to correct the impression made by Eggleston's novels.
The author's first venture at a long story was The Main Chance (1903), the scene of which was laid in Missouri and Nebraska. It at least shows the bent of the author's mind in chosing the setting for his stories. The characters are the men and women of affairs in a rapidly growing western town. In Zelda Dameron (1904) Mr. Nicholson transferred his range to Indianapolis. The story pictures the capital changing from a slightly overgrown, county-seat town to a modern business city. The characters are well drawn but the story as a whole is slow and pains- taking. In the House of a Thousand Candles the author shook the soil from his feet and mounted at once into thin air. He came to anchorage finally at Maxinkuckee, but the story is whole cloth, warp and woof, imagination. The story is a thrill and the book sold. The Port of Missing Men (1907) resembles the
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House of a Thousand Candles in being a purely fan- ciful story. In Rosalind of Red Gate (1907) the author returns to the Annandale of the House of a Thousand Candles, building up another romance largely with the same characters. The Little Brown Jug at Kildare (1908) takes the reader to the Caro- linas. The Lords of High Decision (1909) is a return by the author to his first scene of operations, in which he tried to reform the coal barons of Pittsburgh. The Siege of the Seven Suitors (1910) is a fanciful story located nowhere; but in the Hoosier Chronicle (1912) the author returns boldly to Indianapolis and Crawfordsville and deals frankly with social and political conditions of the nineties. It is a story with a plot, though, like a short tunnel, it is not so dark but one can see light at either end from the middle. Although there is a sufficient amount remaining, pro- vincialism in Indiana was passing away, as one read- ily notes in comparing these characters with those of Eggleston of the second quarter, or those of Riley of the third quarter of the century.
The Provincial American and Other Papers (1912) is a collection of magazine articles principally from the Atlantic. The leading paper, as well as sev- eral others, is autobiographical ; The Provincial Cap- ital is an historical essay on Indianapolis. Otherwise Phyllis (1913) is a second and so far as the story goes, a better Hoosier Chronicle, with Crawfords- ville for a background. The Poet (1914) is a story with Riley for the leading character, the Proof of the Pudding (1916) is yet another Indianapolis story, one of the best the author has written. These and their author's numerous papers published in magazines constitute a valuable commentary on Hoosier char- acter of the later day.21
21 There is no scarcity of notices in the magazines of Mr. Nicholson and his work but no single reference is worth making.
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Other writers who have brought fame to Craw- fordsville are Susan Arnold Wallace (1830-1907), wife of General Wallace, Mary Hannah Krout and her sister, Caroline Virginia Krout. The greater part of the writings of all three relate to their trav- els. As such they have been widely read but they can not be classed as Indiana literature. Caroline Krout is the author of Knights in Fustian (1900) a tale of the Knights of the Golden Circle in Parke and adjoining counties, which not only has historical value but is a readable story. The description of local conditions and the characterization of the com- mon folks are well done. On the Wea Trail has the same general theme as Alice of Old Vincennes. An ancestor of Miss Krout by the name of Benham fig- ures prominently in the story as does the Dubois family. Dionis of the White Veil (1911) is the story of a company of priests and nuns who came from Paris by way of New Orleans with the intention of founding a mission at the mouth of White river. However, it is by their travel stories that the three women are best known.22
Literature was not cultivated in Indianapolis till after the Civil war, though some casual work dates from an earlier period. While Henry Ward Beecher was a pastor there in the forties he edited the West- ern Farmer and Gardner. Contrary to the inference from its name this was a literary journal. In the volume before me, 1846, there are dozens of para- graphs about the every-day affairs of the farm done in spicy English, though it is difficult to see any im-
He has been a contributor for many years to Atlantic. Of late a number of his papers have appeared in World's Work and Collier's. In The Provincial American is the hest account. Even were it in place here, it is too soon to attempt any estimate of the value of Mr. Nicholson's writings.
22 Nicholson, The Hoosiers, 212.
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mediate connection between them and farming. Berry R. Sulgrove, editor of the Indianapolis Jour- nal, preceding the war, was regarded at the time as the most gifted editorial writer in the state; though not so much could always be said for the judgment shown in his editorials. While editing the Journal in 1857 he prevailed on O. H. Smith, then a retired lawyer of Indianapolis, to put in manuscript some of the experiences of his forty years' practice at the law. It would be hard to believe that any other man in the state at the time had a wider acquaintance with its historical characters and certainly in the telling no one could have excelled him. He was in mellow old age; life had been a pleasure to him and his mind was clear and serene. His Early Indiana Trials and Sketches is unique in our history. Its only competi- tor in the field is Judge Jacob Burnet's Notes on the Discovery and Settlement of the Northwest Terri- tory.28 Few Indiana books have been quoted more than the Trials and Sketches.
Early in 1862, when it was seen that the war would be one of the great events in the state's history an Indianapolis publishing house, Merrill & Com- pany, formed the plan of publishing a war history of the state, containing as a feature a biography of each man who lost his life in the cause. The work of editing and writing the two volumes devolved on Catharine Merrill, daughter of Samuel Merrill, one of the well-known pioneers of the state. The volumes are entitled The Indiana Soldier and were published in 1866. At the same time the General Assembly ordered the state librarian, David Stevenson, to pre- pare a list of all the Indiana soldiers engaged in the war, together with brief regimental histories. Mr. Stevenson completed the first volume of this work
28 Published in Cincinnati, 1847.
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but the second and last was finished by Theodore T. Scribner. Curiously enough, the first volume was printed by H. H. Dodd, grand commander of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The volumes are en- titled Indiana's Roll of Honor. The statistical rec- ords contemplated in each of these books was pub- lished by Adjutant General W. H. H. Terrill, in eight volumes and are known as Terrell's Reports.
Contemporary with these historical writers was John B. Dillon, a Virginian by birth (1808), an editor by profession, and state librarian from 1845 to 1851. During his career as editor in Logansport, he, in co- operation with Lasselle, Tipton and others, had accu- mulated a great many documents relating to the his- tory of the state. Dillon formed the ambitious plan of writing a history of the state, but, though encour- aged by the General Assembly and kept in public office eighteen years, he permitted antiquarian curi- osity to lead him so far from his undertaking that he was unable to bring the history down farther than the end of territorial times. His two volumes, His- torical Notes and the History of Indiana, bear date 1843 and 1859 respectively. It is such a straight- forward, accurate account, that it is much to be re- gretted that it was not finished. He drifted off to Washington at the beginning of the Civil war, where he was in federal employment till 1875. He died in Indianapolis in 1879.
Indianapolis, as a literary center, owes a debt to George C. Harding, editor at times of the Herald, the Review, the Journal, Mirror, and Sentinel. He was a literary, rather than an editorial writer. He encouraged all the fledglings to try their wings, not merely by furnishing an avenue of publication but by gathering them to his house, where, around the din- ner table, discussion and criticism were mingled with the meal. Aside from his editorial writings he pub-
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lished a single volume, Miscellaneous Writings (1882).
John H. Holiday, founder of the News and author of a number of historical essays, Elijah Halford, editor of the Journal in the eighties, Charles R. Wil- liams, editor of the News and author of a Life of Rutherford B. Hays, and Louis Howland, its present editor and author of Day Unto Day, are the later edi- tors who have earned wide reputations.
Of those who have devoted themselves to litera- ture Booth Tarkington is best known. He is a native of Indianapolis (1869), educated at Purdue and Princeton. His father, John S. Tarkington, was born at Centerville, Wayne county (1832), graduated from DePauw (1852) ; his mother, Elizabeth Booth, was a native of Salem (1834). The father has practiced law in the state since 1855; was a captain in the Civil war, and has sat on the circuit court bench and in the General Assembly. Mr. Tarkington is thus prepared to speak with understanding of Indiana folks.
A Gentleman from Indiana was his letter of in- troduction to the literary world. It appears in Mc- Clure's in 1897 and in book form in 1899. The theme of A Gentleman from Indiana is village life in Indi- ana shortly after the Civil war. There was an isola- tion of neighborhoods then which has now disap- peared. Fighting cocks from one neighborhood were always on the alert for their rivals in adjoining neighborhoods. The same rivalry extended to schools, to politics and to social life generally. Mr. Tarking- ton has come dangerously near confusing this aspect of frontier life with the vigilance committee activ- ities of the pioneers. As is well known the vigilance committee practice in dying out degenerated into what in Indiana is called whitecapping. The best men in the community usually constituted the vigilance committee, while the worst could just as surely be
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found among the whitecaps. The story is well told, and will preserve for all time a picture of the time when the "fellers" gathered on Saturdays or Sun- days at the old mill, or the neighborhood store. Monsieur Beaucaire (1900) is a French story; The Two Vanrevels (1902) is a love story of the Mexican war period; Cherry (1903) is a Pre-Revolutionary tale; In the Arena (1905) is a collection of six short stories, all of which deal with politics. The author had just spent a term in the state Assembly where he accumulated these impressions. The Conquest of Canaan (1905) is a love story with an Indiana back- ground; The Beautiful Lady (1905) is an Italian story; His Own People (1907) is the story of an American youth who married a "countess" and was glad afterward to get back to his own people. In The Turmoil (1915) Tarkington returned to Indian- apolis and under the guise of a very beautiful love story he scored the very ugly commercial greed which would sacrifice health, hope, friendship and even love for the sake of mere bigness of accumulation.24
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