 CHAPTER 17 ANNA FARQUAR Mrs. Bergingren. I was twenty-two years old when I first went to Boston to visit the family of my father's eldest brother, Mr. John Alston, who at an early age there settled into business prosperity. Thus did a comparatively unknown writer, who passed by the name of Margaret Alston, introduce herself to the readers of the Lady's Home Journal in a series of chapters called Her Boston Experiences. She had something to say, something witty, something satirical, something caustic. It was about baked beans, beacon hill, and the people who live nearby. And she said it under a name of gentle and truly puritanic simplicity, and quite in accord with the honest shafts of sarcasm she not only aimed at the dwellers of the hub, but had before plunged, with satire quite as delicate and sharp, into that cosmopolitan assemblage of notables known as Washington's Society. The inner experiences of a cabinet officer's wife had been a faithful picture of the complexity of ambitions which the outsider who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and wit to appreciate would be astonished to meet with at the capital. It had been so true to life, in fact, that certain personages began to remove the beam in their own eyes, and with delicate introspection, to question themselves, and wonder if some of the characters were not within their own lives. And, as nothing interests the world, especially the feminine world, more than gossip, or than skeleton in the closet history, it became immediately essential to that great assemblage, which is directly answerable to the movement of governmental cogwheels, to find out what a certain person, who had more keenness of perception and more literary ability than they, was saying about them. That is what made this author an interrogation point which many desired to have explained. And that is the reason why the inner experiences of a cabinet officer's wife was a story that found itself beside the glimmer of an unusual number of lamps upon an unusual number of library tables. There are certain characteristics which men admire in each other above all others. There are certainly some characteristics which they do not expect to find in women, or, if they do expect to find them, they always imagine them to be far less developed than in one of their own sacks. That is the reason why the answer to the interrogation point above is, in many respects, a remarkable individual. Margaret Alston's real name, until January 1900, was Anna Farquhar. And as Anna Farquhar, and as Anna Farquhar-Bergingren, she has possessed the quality of perseverance in an extraordinary measure. Of Scotch-English ancestry, the forebears of Anna Farquhar first came to America in Lord Baltimore's time, and were seated property of considerable extent at a distance some forty miles from Baltimore, in Maryland. To this blood may perhaps be traced her ardent affiliation with English friends, and sympathy with English thinkers. She was born December 23, 1865, at Brookville, Indiana, her father being lawyer and congressman. Thus the author of certain phases of Washington life was early associated with diplomacy and diplomatic ideas. After a short residence in Cincinnati, Ohio, her family moved to Indianapolis, where Mr. Farquhar became president of one of the foremost city banks. Here the daughter received the usual education that falls to the lot of an American girl whose family are in the best of circumstances. Similar to James Russell Lowell and other persons who left names of merit in literature or in art, her particular aversion was the study of mathematics. While still quite young she showed a distinct inclination towards languages and history, and an overwhelming love for music. At sixteen she attended a boarding school in Maryland, but soon returned to a life of the gayest society, educating her heels far better than her head will ever be educated. But this life soon pauled upon the girl with ambition, for she had now determined upon a career and to obtain for herself a musical education. In order to realize money for its pursuit, the family property was mortgaged and she left her native town for Boston. The death of her father several years before had made this a possibility. Here she struggled nobly to cultivate her voice and soon received recognition of her growing musical powers by appointment to a position in a church choir. But the raw East winds of New England had already begun to undermine a constitution never very robust, and her throat was so affected that further study was useless. The next few years of life were a gallant fight to attain sufficient strength to warrant a strenuous application to the musical career she was so bent upon, and a residence in the genial Maryland climate and in New York and Washington stimulated the hope that, in the end, she might accomplish the long four results of her pains and energy. It was now she first applied herself to literary work, for, not being able to sing, she found in this an outlet for artistic expression. The next years were a period of toil, of sickness, and of renewed literary endeavor. As a teacher of singing, she was still able to keep in touch with music, and, under the skillful treatment of a New York physician, the lost voice gradually returned, but it was very unstable. A visit to England shortly after a short residence in Boston, where she had held an editorship on a periodical devoted to music, decided her future career. The years of patient endeavor to be a musician had unfortunately been wasted as far as permanent results were concerned. For, said London's foremost teacher of music, her physique and temperament can never stand the strain of the musical life. This was indeed a sad blow, but the many disappointments which had come in years gone by had perhaps prepared her for the acknowledgment of failure, not in willingness or in fortitude or in bravery, but in physical strength to stand the wear and tear of an exacting and strenuous profession. It is for this grit and determination that Anna Farquhar is admired by her friends, and it is for this reason that her literary career has been a succession of upward steps upon the rungs of the ladder of literary fame. She herself says that hers is the gospel of work, that for years her life has been one of unremitting hard labor and struggle for very existence. A motto which hung in her room during her years of fierce combat, for the words, all things come round to those who but will wait. And, she says, to this I added out of my own belief, and work. Work is the highest privilege and hope of mankind, and of late years I have taken to myself the beautiful Italian proverb, when God shuts a door he opens a window. These are incidents which but prove her indomitable spirit of perseverance. A singer's heart, published in Boston, was her first literary endeavor, and to some extent expressed the professional ambitions which she herself had experienced in her musical career. Although it was not a popular production, its notices were most flattering, and when a certain Philadelphia paper of distinct literary conservatism bought twelve copies for its editorial staff, her spirits were naturally raised and stimulated to renewed endeavor. The inner experiences of a cabinet officer's wife she was well qualified to pen, for the associations she had formed with the life of the capital were those which eminently fitted her for a description of the inside political and social workings of its complexities. A host of personal letters which crowded her mail showed that some shafts had struck dangerous ground, but the story swung gracefully on through threatened libel suits and denunciations of every description. There was not a single specific and living character in city life that was intentionally put down, she says, with perhaps one exception, and that was of a woman and by her permission. The professor's daughter first appeared in the Saturday evening post, when it had its great expansion a few years ago. It was the story of simple people in a simple Rhode Island country neighborhood whose characteristics she well knew, for among them she has lived a quiet, studious life for many summers. It contained that human element which has made both Shakespeare and Mark Twain immortal, and it was very popular. Her Boston experiences which first appeared in a magazine ran through many editions in book form. As some worthy New Englander has said, any good Bostonian who doesn't mind a bit of satire at his own expense may send this description of his beloved city to strangers and foreigners with a serene conviction that they will thus gain a better idea of the place in society than any number of guide books could afford. It was trenchant, frank and comic, and gave an excellent picture of many sides of Boston life. It stopped at least one sale of real estate by a satirical slap at a part of town, the reputation of which was morally questionable, and it is said that a Cambridge professor has permanently annexed it to his lectures, to be read to the students as an antidote for some of his driest hours. But this was not art of the highest type, and a woman who had studied the lives of Carlisle, Huxley, Darwin, Spencer, and other great thinkers of the middle 19th century in order to imbibe their spirit of work and energy was naturally desirous of accomplishing something of greater and more lasting artistic excellence. As a result of a sympathetic acquaintance with the territory occupied by the French Jesuits at the earliest period of their missionary efforts in North America, and also with Mr. Parkman's history of their vigorous lives, she received a vivid impression of the romantic possibilities of that period. This led to a rapid development of the romantic complications surrounding the hero of the Devil's Plough. But the study of the French characteristics and habits of the 17th century required the painstaking investigation of several months before the plot could be expanded into a book. The material once at her command the writing took but a short time. When the book had been completed she was temporarily exhausted. Too much dramatic force had been expended in the preparation. As a play in fact it was first conceived, and that is why it found such immediate favor with the dramatic profession when it appeared in book form. The story is of a struggle between pure ideals and the baser emotions in which the higher impulse eventually triumphs. It is not strange then that her feelings were similar to that of a great, perhaps the greatest, American sculptor who, after completing a statue of marvelous spirit and expression, was forced to retire to the quiet of a country life for full six months. In January 1900 Anna Farquhar was married to Ralph Bergingren, a talented Boston journalist. The marriage took place under circumstances of unusual romance, for they were wedded at the side of her bed of illness, with only two or three witnesses present. As a type of Anglo-Saxon womanhood Mrs. Bergingren well exhibits her English ancestry. Above the medium height, with light hair, blue eyes, high color, and regular features, her personal appearance distinctly announces the land of her forefathers. That peculiar look of high intellectuality, which is so marked in many literary women of our own country, is very prominent in the expression of her face. As a conversationalist she is brilliant, and is consequently much sought after as an addition to society. But I seldom go, she says, because I am here to work, and work in society are fatal and absolute enemies. Her literary method is to walk miles and miles when a story comes to me, and when my story people begin to talk I sit and stitch on some hand sewing, when a man would smoke, until everything is ready to go down. Then it goes like an explosion of ideas, so to speak, followed by careful modeling and severe searching criticism. With an individual who is so eager in the endeavor to perfect her art, it is indeed to be expected that the masterpiece will yet come. Although in her own words she tells us that I cannot say that I have a conquest of the world in view, my ambition is simply to do my best. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Little Pilgrimages Among the Women Who Have Written Famous Books by Edward Francis Harkins Chapter 18 Pauline Bradford Mackie Mrs. Hopkins Pauline Bradford Mackie has distinguished herself as a writer of historical fiction, and for this her work is worthy of close consideration. On the question of the merits and demerits of the historical novel has been spilled a vast amount of good ink. It has been a bitter and long-drawn quarrel and much argument has been used to further the pet opinions of partisans of either side. Yet when everything is taken into consideration the weight of argument seems to be in the affirmative. For, as an educational factor, is not the historical novel of real value? The hurry and rush in the life of the everyday American is, for the most part, an expenditure of energy towards the accumulation of riches. The present day Yankee is more essentially a trader than were his ancient Dutch progenitors, and although the education of the average citizen is high, it has usually been in some specific channel, and to the neglect of that knowledge which has been considered of a superficial character. History is a branch of learning in which the average business mind has not been especially well grounded in the course of its preliminary training, and that is the reason why the historical novel fills a needed gap in the lives of a busy people. Dealing honestly with ourselves, we are obliged to acknowledge that there are many and wide breaches in our knowledge of history, and even in the knowledge of the history of our own country. Perhaps the most trivial historical romance that we meet with may fill a gap that we are ashamed to acknowledge. It may even stimulate our interest to such an extent that we are desirous of getting the facts first hand, and search the library shells for the volume of reference that bears directly upon our subject, and in this way accumulate a number of facts that are certainly of cultivating and broadening influence. The novels of Miss Johnston have done much to foster a concern in the annals of early colonial Virginia, and two works. The Life of John Paul Jones and that of Charles James Fox were directly dependent upon the popularity of Richard Carville. Is it possible to point to a novel of the realistic school which set people to profitable employment of their intellects and to the discussion of events which have helped to make world history? The work of Pauline Bradford Mackey does not exhibit the early influences of her literary career as do the creations of some other authors who have passed through a similar period of apprenticeship. For two years after her graduation from the Toledo High School she was engaged in writing for the Toledo Blade, but perhaps with not sufficient seriousness, for at the time she was anxious to become an artist, and was almost as busy with the brush and pencil as with the pen. This career, however, she soon abandoned for that of literature, and although her early contributions to magazines, besides the work upon the paper, were very numerous, she frankly admits that they were so seldom accepted that she has lost all track of them. Although born in Connecticut at Fairfield in 1873, her life has been spent in Ohio. Her father, the Reverend Andrew Mackey, an Episcopal clergyman and graduate of Brown University, was a scholar of repute, and from him she inherits her love for writing and for good literature. Perhaps no embryo writer of romance, who eventually has made a reputation of worth, has had more trying experiences than fell to her when she first essayed the task of authorship. The old Peterson magazine published two of her early ventures, but never paid for them, and the first story for which she was ever paid appeared in Worthington's magazine, which issued only one number subsequent to that in which her article was published. Her first long story, M. Moselle de Bernier, had a conflicting career with the second, E. Little Salem Maid, which possesses a distinctly humorous side. The first had been refused by a Philadelphia house, but as they wished a girl's story of considerable length, E. Little Salem Maid was written and sent to them. Again they were dissatisfied, and sent it back with the statement that it was of but forty thousand words in length, and they wished it to be extended to sixty. So it was conscientiously rewritten, and when the task was completed word was dispatched the critical publishers. Again they were dissatisfied. This time was some point of trivial importance, so the manuscript was promptly forwarded to a New York house, which accepted it, under the proviso that it be cut down to thirty thousand words, or ten thousand below the original number. Its patient author once more rewrote the tale from the very beginning and sent it back. Meanwhile, M. Moselle de Bernier, the first manuscript, had been accepted by the head of a Boston firm, and had appeared upon the bookstands. To its publisher was dispatched word of the acceptance of the second manuscript, and a telegram from him the day following was to the effect that, as the publisher who had risked a venture upon the first book, it was certainly right that he should have the second. The book was accordingly withdrawn from the New York firm as no contract had yet been signed, and was immediately mailed the second house, but again rose a complication. The head of the firm, who had made all negotiations seriously objected to the character of Cotton Mather, and likewise wished fifteen thousand words added to the book. So the greater part of the entire manuscript was for the third time rewritten, and in this form it appeared in print. Since its publication, she tells us, I have never had the courage to read it through. In spite of the trials and tribulations of Ye little Salem made, before her final bow to society, the criticisms of the press were most favorable to her general appearance, and there was an unusual number of people who made her acquaintance, and did so with pleasurable interest. The scenes of the various fortunes which were her lot took place within the ancient town of Salem, at a time when the narrow-minded and bigoted inhabitants were in the height of the semi-religious frenzy over the crime of witchcraft. The fact that Miss Mackie's grandmother was Mahita Bell Bradford, a direct descendant of the Governor of Massachusetts, is what first turned her fancy to the events she here described, and following the advice of Louisa M. Alcott, who was of the opinion that, to write a book of interest, one must plunge into the heart of a story and open it with a conversation, allowing the actors to unfold the plot in themselves dramatically, she had produced a story that had unquestioned merit. Madame Ozil de Bernis, a romance of Valley Forge and of George Washington, as has been shown, had out-distanced ye little Salem made in a somewhat complicated race for publication. Perhaps, as an eminent reviewer has remarked, this taste for the historical novel has been greatly stimulated by the war with Spain. For although we as a nation have always been patriotic, there has been nothing actively exciting to our patriotism for a whole generation. The battles in Cuba stirred up an endless amount of enthusiasm, and the pleasant consciousness that we were a world power, and a great and powerful nation, that came to us after the Battle of Manila Bay, was something almost new, and something that it took some time to realize. For twenty years or more, the patriotic societies had been trying to make us fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, and cousins of colonial and revolutionary heroes, but with ill success. Now everyone was sure that his ancestors had been sterling heroes with musket and sword, and it was but natural that all should be interested in the times of those who had made the beginnings of the country's greatness. This is a perfectly reasonable argument, but the fact that the realistic school had flooded the great literary sea with a mass of miserable material which people were expected to read and enjoy, yet could not, on account of its absolute worthlessness, is perhaps another reason. The same critic spoken of above has put the matter very tersely. He says, We found the workmanship of the realistic novel on a par with the hurried stuff that the reporters for the daily newspapers turn out at breakneck speed, while the presses and the newsboys wait. We do not read the novels to be instructed. We are not hungry for sociological facts and conclusions when we take up a book for an evening's entertainment. No. We want to be entertained by being removed out of ourselves. But I would rather be myself and bear with my own infirmities and perplexities than to spend a whole evening with a lot of very dull people in my neighbor's kitchen. Now your realist of the second or third class takes you into a kitchen through the area door, and he does his very best to make you feel that you are one of that circle of domestics. I have no objection to kitchens and none to domestics. Both, in our present scheme of economy, are necessary. But if I go to a kitchen or am taken there, I want it to be worthwhile. In a Georgian actress, which appeared in 1900, there was sufficient historical background to appeal to the most disinterested respecter of American history, and a story of considerable interest, told with naive freshness that was certainly invigorating. The Georgian actress was Mistress Anne Johnson, daughter of Sir William Johnson, agent of King George III among the Indians, and residing at Johnson Hall on the Mohawk in the years preceding the Revolution. Here she was brought up in strict seclusion with her younger sister Mary, here called Peggy, under the tutelage of Madame von Franken, a personage who in youth had jilted Sir William, and then married a young Dutch soldier. But the frontier life had not interested her as had the frivolities of social London, and there she spent a gay and joyous existence until the death of her husband in a battle with the Indians. Feelings of the deepest remorse no doubt prompted her to take upon herself the education of Sir William's children, and to leave to them her fortune. A young hunter, Daniel Klaus, who subsequently turned out to be Madame von Franken's son and the heir to her estate, now entered the story, and with him Anne fell desperately in love. But a journey to England which she soon took with her younger sister temporarily separated the lovers. In London she became the protege of the immortal Garrick, with whom she appeared upon the stage, but the frontier lover eventually appeared and claimed her as his own. The scenes in London were an excellent portrait of the times of King George III, snuffy old drone from the German hive, and the view of Garrick, who damned America with polysyllabic oratundity and thoroughness, was quite true to the conception of him one gathers from histories of the time. The effeminate Horace Walpole and gruff Dr. Johnson were likewise present. The book in fact showed genuine good workmanship and study, and gave the reader some valuable knowledge, instead of smearing a homely subject with dirt and other filth, and serving it up with the plea that this was realism, and hence should be pleasing to the palette. One descriptive paragraph is worthy of quotation for the delicate, almost stevensonian treatment of the landscape. It is smoke from Old Malshape's pipe, said the Indian, as the hazy air grew bluer, filling the gaps with purple. Morning after morning the sun came up, and the delicate whorefrost vanished like a breath. Each moment of the magic days seemed deliciously prolonged. The tangled branches of the blackberry and the sumac's velvet plumes flamed along the byways in the outskirts of the forest. Although it would seem that such a fragile bit of prose must have been written in the very atmosphere of the land in which the scenes of the story were laid, such was not the case. A Georgian actress was written at Berkeley, California, where Mrs. Hopkins had gone with her husband, Dr. Herbert Mueller Hopkins, who was a professor at the university, and who now occupies the chair of Latin at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. Here too her latest novel, dealing with Washington life during the Civil War, was written. It is called The Washingtonians, and in it she has forsaken the colonial period of American history in which she has been so successful, for that of a later date, and one that is better known to the readers of the present day. For this reason it will be more difficult to please. Mrs. Hopkins is fond of gardening, of flowers, and of long walks. She is likewise fond of animals, and has several beautiful Irish setters. One handsome dog she recently lost was named Shamrock, and was of such a noble nature that she has in mind a story to write of him. Perhaps it will be her next venture. CHAPTER XIX Early in 1898, the manuscript of a Virginian romance came to the Boston office of Halton Mifflin and Company, bearing a new name, Mary Johnston. In time the manuscript passed through the hands of half a dozen readers, who approved it unanimously, and it was published under the title of Prisoners of Hope. That was not its original title, by the way, but it was the title finally agreed upon by the author and the publishers. The instantaneous success of Prisoners of Hope and the quick bound of its writer to a place among the literary celebrities of the country are facts too well known to dilate upon. We may at this point, pardonably remark upon the readiness with which Miss Johnston was admitted into the company of novelists related to one of our foremost publishing houses. Her case is not an exception, it is the rule. The notion that the young author must sail against contrary winds is still apparently as prevalent as ever. To be sure, now and then, it seems to be a very substantial notion. We know that Stephen Crane's Maggie was first rejected, and afterward when it became popular, claimed by a certain publisher. Helen's Babies, another book notable for its popularity, was ragged from travel when accepted. There are other noteworthy instances of publisher's hindsight or unwisdom, but even taken collectively, they do not constitute the rule. So we mention the fate of the Prisoners of Hope, the first work of a writer with neither name nor influence, as an example of the general recognition of talent by American publishers. Miss Johnston, at the time of the publication of her first novel, was twenty-eight. She was born in Buchanan, Virginia, just where the winding James pushes its way through the Blue Ridge on November twenty-first, eighteen-seventy. Her great-great-great-grandfather, Peter Johnston, came to Virginia by way of Holland early in the eighteenth century. He brought with him wealth and influence. One of the memorials of his beneficence is the land on which stands the College of Hampton, Sydney. He had three sons, Peter, Andrew, and Charles. Peter, the eldest who rode in Light Horse Harry Lee's legion, was the father of General Joseph E. Johnston. The second son, Andrew, was the author's great-great-grandfather. He married Anna Nash, through whom Miss Johnston is descended, from Colonel John Nash, a valiant figure in the French and Indian Wars, and during the Revolution, the member from Prince Edward County in the Virginia House of Delegates. There were other distinguished Nashes, John of Templeton Manor in 1738, Justice of Henrico County, Virginia, Abner, a member of the Continental Congress, and at one time Governor of North Carolina, Francis, General Nash, who fell at Germantown. On her mother's side, the author of Prisoners of Hope is strongly Scotch Irish, a lineage which runs back to one of the thirteen apprentices that closed the gates of London Dairy during the Siege of 1680. Thirty years ago, her mother was described as a gentle, shy, young creature with a dowry of sweet feminine traits. The father of the author, John William Johnston, started life humbly in the village of Buchanan. His mother, too, was Scotch. During the War of the Rebellion, he served as a major of artillery in the Confederate Army. It is related that in 1864, the year in which, by the way, hunter's raiders destroyed that part of Buchanan in which his house stood, Major Johnston was sent from Chattanooga to Atlanta for medical treatment. There he was the guest of Mr. John Paul Jones, whose sister, Mrs. Ballard, later established a school for girls. Naturally enough, when Mary, the oldest of the six Johnston children, and Eloise, her sister, grew up, they were put in Mrs. Ballard's care. Ms. Johnston has, from her birth, generally been in poor health. This physical weakness early developed in her a taste for books. Besides, her imagination was diligently cultivated by her father's mother, said to have been a woman of rare force and beauty of character, and of strong intelligence, who, until her death, which happened when her granddaughter was eight, taught Mary much more than the average child ever learns. After several years afterward, Mary's aunt was her teacher, and later the child had a governess. It was all very easy, desultory schooling, writes to us one who is exceptionally familiar with the author's career. Her health was always frail, and there were many interruptions, but whether sick or well, she was continually reading. There was no restriction late upon her in this respect, and she read what she pleased, poetry, history, fiction, whatever came to her hand. Scott and Dickens, she read and reread, and she early acquired a love for Shakespeare. Indeed, after she had discovered some old documents in an out-of-the-way closet, and it constituted herself a sort of librarian, reading and arranging the writings from morning to evening, it was predicted that she would yet write a book. A safe prediction it proved to be, a much safer prediction than to say that a little girl who says her morning and evening prayers fervently will yet be a nun. She was a self-reliant child, too. There is a story that runs. Once when only six years old, happening to go too near an open grate, her dress took fire and she was soon in a light blaze. She was alone, but rolling herself in the hearth rug, she extinguished the flames, saying, when asked why she adopted such a method, that her grandmother had told her of a little girl who had wrapped herself up in a blanket on a similar occasion, and that she thought the rug would do as well. The distinguishing characteristic of the future author at this period says the one who tells the fire story was an unusual quantity of closely curled yellow hair, a lock of which was clipped from her tiny head soon after her birth and sent as a sample to her maternal grandparents in West Virginia. Meantime, since the close of the war, Major Johnston, a civil engineer by profession, had become interested in several railways in the South, and in 1885 his pressing business caused the removal of the family from Buchanan to Birmingham, Alabama, where for the most part the Johnston's have made their home. The year following the settlement in Birmingham, Mary and her sister were sent to the Ballard School in Atlanta. The three months at school hurt Mary's health so severely that she returned to Birmingham, henceforth to educate herself according to her own disposition. However, when in 1887 her mother died, Ms. Johnston, notwithstanding her poor health, undertook the management of the household, a management which she exercises up to the present time. The year after her mother's death, Mary and her father visited Europe. This visit may be spoken of as a turning point in her life, her notes on it contributed to a little Virginia newspaper made up her first literary offering, but although she has moved hither and thither, Ms. Johnston has spent at least a part of every year in Virginia, lately on Cobb's Island, a small spot just off the eastern shore. The hills and mountains of which she is so fond are prominent in the landscapes in Prisoners of Hope, while the shores and marshes described in To Have and To Hold had familiarized themselves to the author during her periodical sojourns on Cobb's Island. It is said that when Ms. Johnston was a young girl, she drew a crayon portrait of her father's brother, which indicates the force with which her talents might have flowed in that channel had not another been cut for them by nature. We mention the portrait incident merely to emphasize the early rise of her independence and ambition. She was an uncommon child in many respects, but they who predicted that someday she would write a book judged her best. The prediction was realized during the winter of 1896. For three years previously, the Johnstons had gone to New York after leaving Virginia. In 1894, Mary virtually became an invalid. Horsed to lie still, she read and studied until her mind craved recreation. Then she took up her pencil. It will hardly surprise any reader to learn that her sentiments at first found expression in verse, but Meader and Ryan were driven away when the scheme of Prisoners of Hope presented itself. She wrote the story literally page by page. She was inexperienced in the art of constructing a story and felt her way slowly, sensitively, besides her health was frailer than ever and the cares of the household still devolved upon her. So the writing of her first novel occupied more than a year and a half. It was her secret. Surprise struck every member of the family when she exhibited the letter informing her that the story was acceptable. Prisoners of Hope was indeed successful, but it was its successor to have and to hold that emblazoned Mary Johnston's name. To have and to hold established a record in sales among books written lately by American women, a fact not to be depreciated by the extraordinary popularity of Miss Runkel's Helmet of Navarre. To have and to hold appeared in a field of unprecedentedly strong competitors. The work of virtually a new writer, it would have done well to finish inside the distance flag, to use the horseman's parlance. Instead, however, finishing thus modestly, it challenged the leader, and rightfully enough, for it had all the characteristics of a popular favorite. It is, we may still speak of it in the present tense, an extremely enjoyable story. The characters are vividly portrayed, the scenes fit together smoothly and naturally, the spirit of the times with which the story deals is well sustained. To have and to hold, in short, is the work of a born storyteller. If we are to give assent to the opinion that a novel should be mere entertainment, then each of Miss Johnston's novels may be included in the best of modern fiction. And by the same token, the Virginia Lady may be regarded as a very successful novelist. Her latest story, Audrey, has been interesting as a serial. What it will prove to be as a book, shown among hundreds of other books seeking the favor of the public, is only to be conjectured. We are indebted to a southern friend for the following information. Miss Johnston's home in Birmingham is, in some respects, typical of the old homes of the South, without, however, suggesting the colonial. It is set well back from the street, and the balconies and the exterior are decidedly attractive. And the filmy draperies that the long French windows suggest the charming, sunlit apartments of a well-regulated home. The library where Miss Johnston does her work is lined with books. It is a long, attractive apartment, through the windows of which one gets a broad view of the sky. Her desk lies open, and the morning's mail is scattered around. A black-and-gold clock ticks away on the mantle shelf. Above the bookcases are a number of marble busts. It is a room with the atmosphere of books and pictures. The author is not very tall, and her figure is slender and fragile. She carries herself well, and has that high-bred air that gives her a distinctive charm in any assembly. Her eyes are large and brown, with little flecks of gold. Her light brown hair is soft and wavy, and she wears it simply. She dresses quietly and fashionably. Her tastes are those of a charming woman, who, although unconventional, respects every propriety. Briefly, her life is out of any high-bred, aristocratic girl of the South. Miss Johnston's remarks to interviewers usually take this form. I am glad to talk of my work. I am, of course, gratified at its success, and I appreciate all that is said, but I have made it a rule not to talk for publication. End of chapter 19. Chapter 20 of Little Pilgrimages Among the Women Who Have Written Famous Books. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Betty B. Little Pilgrimages Among the Women Who Have Written Famous Books by Edward Francis Harkins. Chapter 20. Ella Anderson G. Glasgow. The majority of readers unconsciously associate every author who has been born and bred south of Mason and Dixon's line with the depiction of life and character of the Southern people. It was consequently rather startling when there appeared a Virginian who knew Northern life, even metropolitan life, as intimately as those who had been bred to it. A Virginian author who did not write of gay and valorous colonial cavaliers who did unheard of deeds of bravery and courted unquestionably beautiful, be powdered, be quilted, and be shroomy, gentle sir, conversing damsels, or of molly, cotton tails, of foxes and of other shy, retiring animals, who held as brilliant an intellectual conversation with each other as do the members of the players, where this reason Ms. Ellen Glasgow first drew attention to herself. The descendant, a rather morbid exposition of the development and life of an intellectual hybrid, the offspring of a low woman and a highly intellectual man, was a story of distinct strength and character in which there were touches of Stephen Crane linked with fighting sarcasm and with pessimistic wit. It appeared in 1899 and was the herald of more brilliancy to come. When we read that, over the meadows, the amber light of the afterglow fell like rain. There was something that reminded one quite forcibly of Crane's famous amber tinted river that purled along in Whispering Splendor. But there were other passages, in fact, many of them, which showed a depth of thought that was unusual and also the most pleasing of all literary traits, that of deep scientific and philosophic reflection. Although a Virginian, Ms. Glasgow knew the atmosphere of New York literary bohemia, which pervaded the descendant and likewise the phases of an inferior planet, her second venture, where she had frequently come and gone on its easygoing tide. The fact that her forebears upon her father's side were all lawyers, judges, and the like is accountable for her love of literature and of the literary life. She was born in Richmond, Virginia, and has lived a great deal at a country home nearby, where she developed a love for the country and for such natural things as earth and sky and the lesser animals, which is in great evidence in all her writings. As a child, she was delicate, a fact that kept her from attending school with the other children and perhaps accounted for the philosophic manner in which she quite early regarded the progress of human events. Such learning as she received was won almost entirely by her own individual effort. The first simple step in reading and in writing, she took unaided and reading was not learned from school books, but from long days spent over Scott's novels, when spurred on by her delight in the stories, which on winter evening she had heard in the firelight from the lips of an elderly and affectionate aunt, she would spell out the words one by one. As she grew older, this love for books increased and everything that she could lay her hands upon was absorbed with a greed that was insatiable. Of course, much fell into her hands that was unadulterated trash, but likewise much that had intrinsic merit. By the time she was 13, she had learned to enjoy Robert Browning and he has never lost the first place among the poets in her heart, although Swinburne is likewise a favor. Perhaps many children of unusual intellectuality have displayed an equal love for books, but in Ms. Glasgow, the imaginative development soon took a scientific trend, which is quite unusual. At 18, she began a systematic study of political economy and of socialism, which brought her mind to a serious point where the imaginative flights stimulated by fairy stories and by writers of romance were held in check by the ponderous thoughts of the world's greatest men of science. One who was well qualified to speak says that law and the evolution of phenomena by means of law now became her point of view and a viewpoint from which she has never swerved. In spite of this love and absorption of abstract sciences, her inborn love of stories has remained. The most prominent characteristic of Ms. Glasgow's personality is well shown by the following incident. In response to a request for her biography from a literary periodical, she wrote, I remember once trying to write a sketch of my life and getting as far as I was born. To this day, I found nothing more to add and surely to be born is no difficult accomplishment. Apart from this, I have made it a rule never to publish personal things, not that I am peculiarly modest or even painfully dull, but if the truth must be told, even my friends admit that I never say anything interesting about myself. This modesty is paramount and it is for this reason that she is seldom seen in society. Society does not attract the majority of literary people, some perhaps as a means for the study of human eccentricities, for there's much else for them to be thinking about. Ms. Glasgow is no exception to the rule. She is quiet and reserved in the company of others, although when her interest or sympathy is awakened, the ready southern cordiality warms her manner. The knowledge of the law of evolution and the study of Spencer of Darwin and the other great scientists, she says, has been one of the greatest pleasures of her existence. Long before she fully grasped the significance of the law of evolution, she felt rather than realized the close relationship between man and beast. Her love of animals is paramount. Even the birds of the air are her pets and their clamor at her window often sends her flying from her desk to the pantry. To secure the supply of crumbs they have learned to expect from her hands. This love of hers is combined with an interest that is all absorbing. The habits, the actions, the different characteristics of this lower animal world interest her beyond measure on account of their analogies to the higher life of man. Here, paralleled in miniature, she had begun to scribble verses by the time she could read in words of two syllables. And while yet a mere girl wrote an entire novel which she had good judgment and tacked enough not to inflict upon some struggling publishers, literary advisor. Although her first success came with the descendant finished before her 22nd birthday, she had written other articles before and they had been published in magazines. Success did not come easily. She had always worked hard both with brain and with pen and she still writes with care and continually. From her very soul she has remarked she believes that the true success is to labor. This infinite care and painstaking endeavor was well evinced in certain passages of her third book, The Voice of the People, a story of her own Virginia and its curious class distinctions. The familiarity and accuracy with which the working of party machinery was given in minute detail exhibited a careful and conscientious study of political ways and means. We are told that as early as 1897 when the plot for the story was first beginning to take shape in her mind, she drove more than 20 miles over the mountains and in the hottest of August weather in order to sit through two days of a democratic convention which had been called in order to nominate a governor. She was smuggled in at the stage door of the opera house where the convention was held through friendly influence and sat upon the stage surrounded by delegates from all parts of the state. She and her companion were the only women in the building. By close observation, she was thus able to give an inside view of political life, the truth and consistency of which could be vouched for by actual facts. The influence of her favorite book, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a book which she is never without for it accompanies her even upon her travels was well shown in The Voice of the People. The characters, all of them contemporary Virginians were clearly delineated in a pungently philosophical vein that exhibited the influence of the mastermind which looked at reasons and motives and it brought her questions than mere petty vein glory and personal ambition. Her powers of observation were here at their maximum of efficiency because this was her own native heath and the characters were those with whom she was more at home than with the overeducated and morbidly sensitive men and women who lived and died with the descendant and drew breath in her faces of an inferior planet. The scene of the first half of the later novel was laid at Kingsborough, readily recognized as Williamsburg, Virginia, a town which dozed through the present to dream of the past and found the future a nightmare and the latter half in Ms. Glasgow's native town of Richmond, the characters too were those she knew from childhood. There was the old judge, a genuine and noble Virginia gentleman from his classic head to his ill-fitting boots, general battle, a colonel during the war, but raised to the rank of general by the unanimous vote of his neighbors on his return home. Ms. Chris, his amiable sister who had never surrendered and was happy for 40 years with a broken heart. Eugenia, a sweet and capable heroine and the hero, Nick Burr, a rufous-headed son of the people, a member of that well-known Southern sect known as a pole-wide trash, yet with genuine ability and infinite perseverance. His progress from the shiftless ranks in which he was born to the powerful upper class of the gentry constituted the motive and force of the tale. From the time when he interrupted a conversation between the kind-hearted judge and his own tobacco-chewing father with the remark that, there's nothing in farming, I'd rather be a judge, to the moment when he reached the governmental chair by means of his own sterling merit and indomitable will. Progress of Nick Burr was replete with those perfectly human and logical events which belonged to the life of the individual who was determined to be in the front ranks of those who entered the fierce political strife. It was the survival of the fittest exemplified in present-day Virginia life. The Negro element was, of course, subordinate but lent a picturesque background and furnished some wit and still more humor. There were Uncle Ish and Aunt Burbini who gave that to many delightful bits of unintellectual philosophy. One was that it was evident that it was a civil war because when the Yankees rode up to the house and their hostess came out smiling and giving them welcome, they stood there bowing and scraping and it was as civil as if they'd come a curtain. With the voice of the people, Miss Glasgow had remained at home and it was good that she had done so. She had written the manuscript, only went in the mood for it and it was therefore well done and thoroughly well done. Her method of work is to write when the spirit is upon her and then to write as long as she feels physically and mentally fit. Thus her periods of work vary from one to three, four and often 12 hours a day although the latter is quite unusual. The descendant was written in a year but she worked at it fitfully, sometimes leading off for a full month. To each of the two subsequent books, she devoted two years of study and of careful preparation. At present she is engaged in the construction of a novel dealing with the civil war and the Virginia life of that period. It is to treat not only of the events which transpired during the four years of conflict but also of those just previous to the outbreak of hostilities. From one who is such a careful and exact reasoner it will be interesting to view the final resultant and see whether or not it will be colored with partisan feeling or will give a broad and unbiased opinion of those events which are still fresh in the memories of many Virginians. In view of the recent triumph of the crisis the outcome will be most interesting to the world of letters. End of chapter 20. Chapter 21 of Little Pilgrimages among the women who have written famous books. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sonja. Little Pilgrimages among the women who have written famous books by Edward Francis Harkins. Chapter 21. Bertha Ronkel. The Helmet of Navarre was a remarkable book for many reasons, but the fact that its author was little over twenty years of age was not the most remarkable. Bryant had written Thanatopsis before he had reached that age and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps composed The Gates of Jar at nineteen. The most interesting fact about the production of The Helmet of Navarre is that its author has never even called a glimpse of the shores of France. Indeed she has seldom been beyond the boundaries of New York State. The castles in which royalty here disported were true castles in the air. In considering the book therefore we view what may be accomplished by long-distance flights of the imagination. Miss Bertha Ronkel is a product of the literary atmosphere of New York combined with the healthy and muscle-giving properties of golf and of tennis. Thus disproving the oft-quoted and quite prevalent theory that literary minds and frail bodies are inseparably linked together. Although the state of New Jersey is associated in the minds of most of us with sand flats, mosquitoes and malaria it has the honor of claiming the birthplace of the newest addition to American expounders of historical romance. The mind of Miss Bertha Ronkel was first stimulated to literary expression at Barclay Heights, New Jersey. A small place, a quiet place and a distinctly suburban place but in 1888 she and her mother moved to New York where association with a more swiftly moving environment than that of a back country town did much too bright and in intellect which already showed signs of brilliancy quite out of the ordinary. Her love of the good things in literature indeed comes honestly. For her father Cornelius A. Ronkel who died when she was a young girl was a well-known New York lawyer and for many years counsel for the New York Tribune and her mother was, previous to her marriage, an editorial writer on the same paper. The first American woman in fact to be on the staff of a great metropolitan daily. When a very small child the author of the helmet of Navarre showed distinct signs of romantic promise. For while other infants were cooing sweet words of wisdom and of pseudo love to dolls of paper and of wax she was amusing herself by compiling stories and by beginning to write them down. With true Celtic genius however she would tire of them about the third chapter and begin another one. Again note the early expression of the real artistic nature. Such education as it was her pleasure to be subjected to was first received at home and then at a fashionable New York boarding school where yellow-backed novels were more popular than the works of Zachary and Carlisle. This story writing trick of hers however still remained and in some way offset the moral degeneracy into which such dissipations as an over-indulgence in five-pound boxes of foilers or mallards and in the matinee threatened to plunge her. In 1893 her mother purchased a small piece of land at Ontario, Tannersville, New York and upon it built a house where she and her daughter have lived every summer. It is here that Miss Runker has followed the life of the typical American girl one sees in the center pages in life and learned not only how to write a successful novel but also how to swing a golf club, ride a wheel, drive a cart and in spite of endless skirts play an excellent game of tennis. The virility which infused the pages of her first book was but the virility of her own nature. Spencer has said the book is the man himself. Here is an excellent proof of the saying only this time it is a woman. When Miss Runker received a letter saying that her story would first be published in the Century Magazine and enclosing a check for serial rights a smile of intense satisfaction passed over her face as she held out the check for her mother to see and the subsequent developments which the manuscript evolved when it appeared in printed form have left that smile in possession of her features. One of the first things she did with her newly acquired wealth was to purchase a pony and cart. The pony was a very little one but she made him extremely well acquainted with the mountain roads and when the summer was over and it grew cold in Antiora, too cold in fact for comfort she drove her mother all the way to New York. It took three whole days and they both enjoyed it. The pony's name is Peggy, short for Pegasus. There is nothing of the blue stocking the Chautauquan assembly campstooler the WCTU woman or the intellectual hyena about Miss Runkle. In her own words, she says she dislikes extremely being looked at as a literary freak. If you should see her driving around Antiora in a short skirt with her hair hanging down her back in two thick braids you would never suspect that she is the author of one of the most popular novels of the past year nor would you suspect it if you saw her dancing at one of the inn's informal hops. She is as simple, as wholesome, as genuine as any American girl. She has always been extremely fond of history, biography, memoirs and the like so the study of the helmet of Navarre was part of the fun. She had a story in her mind for two years or so and the actual writing took about four months but she didn't put all her time upon it, the mornings only, the afternoons were spent out of doors. The title of the helmet of Navarre was taken from a passage in Lord Macaulay's Yvree which its author adopted as a motto. Press where you see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war and be your oriflam today the helmet of Navarre. The book came out with a great shouting, a banging of drums, blaring of trumpets and tons of advertising and it was not a book that one could easily ignore for great black letters heralding its power, its beauty and its great worth stared at one from the pages of every newspaper and magazine. In fact a line in large letters upon the paper wrapper of the very book itself quoted a contemporary to the effect that any writer of any age might rejoice in its equal. For this reason many read it who would not have otherwise done so and the effect on the whole was very agreeable. The reader began with expectation of immediately seeing the king or at least catching a glimpse of his plume or his horse's heel but such was not the case. The authors restrained in not at once hurling this fiery meteor among the lesser constellations inspired gratitude. Fictional kings are extremely difficult things to manage. Like the queen in Alice in Wonderland they are either continually in the way or else are always sundering off with his or her head. For this reason Miss Rangel showed judicious foresight and a sense of the artistic that was very commendable but his course was at the bottom of the events which were primarily introduced. The power of the league and of Monsieur de Mayenne was dying and Henry was about to ascend the throne when the story began. The great Duke de Saint-Quentin was Henry's staunch partisan and had come up to Paris to flaunt his loyalty in the face of Mayenne. Félix Broux, servitor of the aforesaid was the hero of the tale and came to Paris at the same time and immediately became involved in a number of plots, counter-plots, escapades, fights and brawls that have happened to the innumerable fictional heroes of the France of that period from the famous musketeers of Dumas to the rollicking blades of Stanley Wayman. The intrigue in which the youthful hero became implicated was as complicated as the windings of the maze from the looking-glass intricacies of which the gullible visitor pays a delicate sum to be extracted. The Duke de Saint-Quentin and his son, the Count de Marre, had become estranged through the villainies of one Lucas, who was employed as the Duke's secretary, but was in reality a nephew of Mayenne and a spy of the league. Félix Broux and the Count de Marre became warm friends and moved from one peril to another with a cheerful indifference to sudden death that gladdened the heart. The former was the means of bringing about the reconciliation and understanding between father and son and of exposing the evil machinations of Lucas, and thereafter served de Marre with unfailing loyalty and unswerving purpose. Lucas, who was the evil genius of the tale, time and time again wove plot after plot with trigonometrical precision, but the Saint-Quentin, who were ever upon the brink of destruction, always managed to extricate themselves with the dexterity of a Sherlock Holmes. The love-episodes were furnished by the Count de Marre and the ward of the Duke de Mayenne, Laurence de Monluc. Laurence eventually escaped from her guardian's house and made a journey on foot to her lover in the camp of the Bearnet at Saint-Denis, and the book ended with the customary union of two fond and loving hearts. There were the usual number of snares, secret passages, mysterious inns, and rascally landlords, and, of course, many sparks from whizzing sorts. The fact that he also eschewed the local color that is generally supposed to exist in terms of speech in characteristic oaths and exclamations, such as by the second little finger of the Night of St. Madrid, Ventre Saint-Grie, et cetera, was decidedly a point in her favor. The few that were used had no taint of artifice and the merit was everywhere in evidence. Considered then as an entity, the Helmet of Navarre was not the most remarkable work of present-day fiction, as its publishers would have us believe, but a very creditable bit of writing, especially for an author who had not yet reached a quarter-century mark, and one which was read by a great many people simply from the fact of its having been vigorously brought to their attention. But the fact that it was the product of the American girl that we are so proud of, the American girl who can fish and shoot and do and dare is its greatest merit. Vive la femme américaine. End of chapter 21. End of Little Pilgrimages Among the Women Who Have Written Famous Books by Edward Francis Harkins.