GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE

A Study of His Early Life and Work

INAUGURAL DISSERTATION

By

KJELL EKSTROM Pil. lie., SmSl.

DUE PERMISSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL FACULTY OF THE

Un iv e r s it y o f u p s a l a t o b e p u b l ic l y d is c u s s e d i n E n g l is h

LECTJJRE r o o m IV, o n DECEMBER 14, 1950, AT 10 O’CLOCK A.M., FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

LUND 1950 CARL BLOMS BOKTRYCKERI A.-B. T h e Am e r ic a n I n s t it u t e in t h e U n iv e r s it y o f U psa l a

ESSAYS AND STUDIES ON AMERICAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Edited by S. B. LILJEGREN

/n Cooperation with O. S. Arngart, Frank Behhe, and Eilebt Eew all

X GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE

A Study of His Early Life and Work

By

KJELL EKSTR

UPSALA 1950

KRAUS REPRINT Nehdcln/Lieditenstein 1 9 7 3 : MS

Reprinted by permission of Professor LILJEGREN, Drottningholm/Sw^en

KRAUS REPRINT A Division of KRAUS-THOMSON ORGANIZATION LIMITED Nendeln/Liechtenstem

1 9 7 3 Printed in Germany To my Wife PREFACE

Although seven decades have elapsed since George Washing­ ton Cable published his most significant books, and twenty-five years since his death, scholarly works on him are compara­ tively few. Three years after his death in 1925, his daughter, Mrs Lucy Cable Bikle, published a biography of him, entitled George W. Cable, His Life and Letters. This volume gives an interesting selection of Cable’s letters and seems to be, on the whole, reliable as to facts. Being first and foremost a collection of letters, it does not, however, enter into a dis­ cussion of the various problems connected with Cable’s work, his attitude towards the Creoles, the reaction of the Creoles to his books etc. And it is only natural that Mrs Bikle’s selection of letters and facts should be somewhat influenced by family considerations. Certain aspects of Cable’s life and work have been treated in magazine articles, of which may be mentioned George S. Wykoff’s “The Cable Family in Indiana”, Arlin Turner’s “George Washington Cable’s Literary Apprenticeship”, “Whittier Calls on George W. Cable”, and “George W. Cable, Novelist and Reformer”, and Edward L. Tinker’s “Cable and the Creoles”. There are also a number of unpublished disser­ tations on Cable, most of which bear witness to a prejudiced attitude towards him. Only Arnaud’s Master’s Thesis on the French element in Cable’s work is worthy of being mentioned, and even that thesis is unscholarly in many respects. Some years ago Mrs Bikle handed over to the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library of Tulane University, New Orleans, a large collection of Cable’s correspondence, manuscripts and other material connected with her father, thus making it available for scholarly research. A thorough examination of the whole VI of this collection is the primary basis of the present work, which, it is hoped, will in due time be.followed by another volume dealing with Cable’s later life and work. Here I wish to stress the fact that my research does not cover the field of literary sources. Chapter IX is intended only as a preliminary study of that subject. In view of the fact that some authorities maintain that Cable had not read any fictira at all when he set out to tell his Creole stories, it has seemed to me that my findings with regard to Cable’s reading habits are so interesting as to justify publication. Important: In quotations in the present work, additions have been put within square brackets, while omissions have been indicated by three asterisks; asterisks have not been used for any other purpose in this work. The system used in numbering the footnotes will, in a few cases, put the reader to the inconvenience of looking one or several pages back to find the footnote; it is hoped that he, or she, will easily get used to the system.

I am greatly indebted to my teacher. Professor S. B. Lilje- gren. University of Upsala, who, in the summer of 1948, suggested this study. He has followed the progress of my work with unfailing interest, constantly giving me criticism, advice, and encouragement. It is hard to acknowledge adequately the debt I owe to him. I take pleasure in acknowledging a scholarship granted me by Tulane University, New Orleans, vsithout which I could hardly have completed my research in New Orleans. My thanks are due to Professor R. P. McCutcheon, Dean of the Graduate School of Tulane University, for valuable assistance and for his great hospitality in letting me and my wife live in his home during four summer months in 1949; the comforts of his house made it easier for us to stand the tropical heat of the long Louisiana summer. I should also like to express my gratitude to Dr Garland Taylor, Librarian of the Howard- Tilton Memorial Library, New Orleans, who gave me access' to the whole of the George Washington Cable Collection of that library; to the staff of the Howard-Tilton Memorial VII

Library, -who endeavoured, in every way, to facilitate my studies; to Mrs Kinne Cable Oechsner and Mrs Parkinson Keyes, of New Orleans, for their interest in my work; to Professor Arlin Turner, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, for interesting discussions; to Professor Helge Kokeritz and Professor Stanley Williams, Yale University, New Haven, for hospitality and assistance; to Professor Paul Spencer Wood and Mr Philip Butcher, Columbia University, New York, for discussions of my work. I am faced with the impossibility of acknowledging specifically my indebtedness to the many persons, university teachers, students, and others, who, during my stay in the South, made me realize that Southern hospitality is not an empty phrase. For permission to quote from the letters in the Cable Collec­ tion of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library my thanks are due to Mrs Lucy Cable Bikle and Mrs Louise Cable Chard; I also wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mrs Bikle’s George W. Cable, His Life and Letters. For permission to quote extracts from that work my thanks are due to its publishers, Charles Scribner s Sons, New York. Finally I am indebted to my mother, Mrs Eva Ekstrom, of Malm5, to my brother, Mr John Ekstrom, of Stocksund, for assistance in connection with my journey to New Orleans, and to my wife, Mrs Siri Ekstrom, who accompanied me to the United States and without whose assistance my work in New Orleans could not have, been brought to completion in the comparatively short time at my disposal. Malmo, October, 1950. KJELL EKSTROM. CONTENTS

PREFACE ...... V INTRODUCTION ...... 1 I PARENTAGE ...... 3 II BOYHOOD ...... 10 III THE W A R ...... 20 IV AFTER THE WAR: OFFICE WORK, SURVEYING AND JOUR­ NALISM ...... 3 0 V OLD CREOLE DAYS, THE GBANDISSIMES, MADAME DEL- PHINE ...... 45 VI IN THE HOUSE IN EIGHTH STREET ...... 65 VII FIRST VISITS TO THE NORTH ...... 72 VIII THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA AND DR. S E V IE R ...... 8 2 IX POSSIBLE LITERARY INFLUENCES ON OLD CREOLE DAYS AND THE GBANDISSIMES ...... 91 X NON-LITERARY SOURCES OF OLD CREOLE DAYS, THE GRANDISSIMES AND DB. SEVIER ...... 9 9 XI CABLE’S TREATMENT OF THE CREOLES IN HIS EARLY FICTION ...... I l l XII CABLE’S TBEATMENT OF THE CBEOLES IN HIS HISTORI­ CAL W O R K ...... 143 XIII THE RECEPTION OF CABLE’S EARLY WORK: THE REAC­ TION OF THE C R E O L E S ...... 153 XIV CABLE AND THE CREOLES: SOME ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM ...... 172 CONCLUSION ...... 183 BIBLIOGBAPHY ...... 185 INDEX ...... 194 INTRODUCTION

‘ Literature is at a standstill in America, paralysed by the Civil War,” wrote Stedman in 1864. But not many years after that war, there came a stream of new life into American letters. All of a sudden, writers in widely scattered parts of the United States became aware of the literary possibilities of their own surroundings, and this phenomenon took such proportions that one is justified in speaking of a second discovery of America and of the 1870’s as the decade of the local colourists.* This development has been explained as a result of the Civil War, which brought millions of men into contact with far- off sections of their country, thus increasing their conscious­ ness of sectional differences.^ It may, however, also be seen in a different light. All over the Western world, at that time, romanticism was giving way to realistic trends. The romantics had been using local colour in their descriptions of distant countries, which in most cases they had never visited. Now it was natural for the realistic writers to use the local colour technique in writing about their own city or state. The import­ ance of the reading public of the North must, however, not be overlooked. Their interest in the South and the West had been awakened, and their demand was for stories about these regions. As always, the writers wrote, more or less consciously, to satisfy the demands of their readers. Many literary movements have had a program founded on a literary theory, but such was not the case with those American writers now classified as local colourists. They did not set out to found a school. Only when many of their

‘ F. L. Pattee, A History of American Literature Since 1870. Van W yck Brooks, The Times of Melville and Whitman. * E. W. Parks, Charles Egbert Craddock, 87. books were written was the term applied to them. Charac­ teristic of these authors was the fact that none of them had been educated at a college or a university. They were self-made men, who had received their education in the school of life. Their style may sometimes be a little unpolished, but to make up for this deficiency they had something that university men often lack: experience from different walks of life and contact with the working people. In the .early 1870’s publishers and magazine editors were flooded with poems, short stories and novels, depicting life in the remote corners of the United States. And these literary products found favour both ^ith editors and readers. Within a few years of its start Scribner’s Monthly had made the names of George W. Cable, Harry Stillwell Edwards, Joel Chandler Harris, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Thomas Nel­ son Page, and Ruth McEnery Stuart “household words all over the country’’.^ The Atlantic Monthly also recognized the value of the new Southern poets and story-writers. In 1873, the year of the publication of Cable’s “ ’Sieur George” in Scribner’s Monthly, the Atlantic Monthly published Maurice Thompson’s poem “At the Window”. In the same year and in the following, George Cary Eggleston’s A Rebel’s Recollec­ tions appeared in it, and a few years later followed Charles Egbert Craddock’s first story of the Tennessee mountains. “The effect of all this literature on Northern readers,” writes E. Mims,4 “was altogether wholesome, and ministered no doubt to the better understanding both of the Old South and of the New. The stories of Harris, Page, Cable, and Craddock reached the Northern mind to a degree never approached by the logic of Calhoun or the eloquence of impetuous orators.” Among the numerous local colourists of that time, George Washington Cable was, if not the foremost, certainly one of the foremost and perhaps the most popular. • L. F. Tooker, The Jogs and Tribulations of an Editor, 41. * In his biography of Sidney Lanier, 288. CHAPTER I

PARENTAGE

George Washington Cable was born in New Orleans on October 12, 1844. His father’s name was George Washington Cable and his mother’s Rebecca Cable, n^e Boardman. The father was the descendant of one Jacob Kabell, who arrived in America in 1710 as one of a group of colonists from the Rhine Valley. The leader of the group was a nobleman, Baron Jan Jost Heydt, who had sold his ancestral estates and fled from religious persecution, and Jacob Kabell may have left his country for the same reason. Anyhow, the colonists landed at Kingston on the Hudson and settled in the state of New York. When after seven years they were informed that no title deeds would be given them by the Governor of that state, the whole party accepted the more generous terras offered by the Governor of Pennsylvania. Consequently they constructed boats and moved down the Susquehanna River into Pennsylvania. Jacob Kabell is mentioned there as having constructed woollen weaving mills. The Indians were, however, a constant menace to these enterprising colonists. So once more they broke up, moving south into Virginia where they founded a new settlement called Strasburg, six miles below the present city of Win­ chester. Here, about 1732, Sebastian Cable was born, evidently a son of Jacob Kabell. Sebastian had a son Jacob, whose son George was the paternal grandfather of the novelist.^ George Cable married Mary Stott, and in Winchester, Virginia, on February 28, 1811, the

‘ This account of Cable’s paternal ancestry down to his grandfather is based on a manuscript report of genealogical research made in New York libraries by Antoinette Cable Cox. novelist’s father was born. While he was still a child, George and Mary Cable moved to southern Pennsylvania where they freed their Negro slaved. Later, about 1830, they followed the stream of settlers into Indiana, which had been admitted into the Union as a state in 1816. Here they settled in Lawrenceburg, Dearborn County, Where George Washington met Rebecca Boardman, whom he.married in Ripley County on January 9, 1834.2 i Rebecca Boardman, the' novelist^s mother, was a lineal descendant of the founder of the Boa -dman family in America, Samuel Boreman [sic], who left his n itive England and settled, in 1638, at Ipswich, Massachusetts. T iree years later he moved to Wethersfield, Connecticut. His w fe Mary, nee Betts, bore him eight children,* of which Daniel married Hannah Wright and had twelve children. Benjamin, Daniel’s eleventh child, married Deborah Goodrich. Thaddeus Bordman, one of Benjam n’s five children, married Rebecca Smith. Of their eight childn ;n, Amos, the eldest, was the maternal grandfather of George W. Cable, the novelist, Amos Boardman — according to lary Cable, the novelist’s sister, that generation was the first to put the a into the name * — was born at Sharon, Connecticut, on July 23, 1767. There, in 1792, he married Zadia Marchant, -w ho bore him two children before she died. Arnos then remarried, his second wife being Sylvia Noble, born in Sheffield, Mass 3jchusetts, in 1779, whose father, Ezekiel Noble, had served as a private soldier during the American Hevolution.® After his second marriage Amos Boardman lived in Hector, New York where two boys and two girls were born.®

* Lucy L. Cable Bikle, George W. Cable, His Life and Letters, 3. George S. Wykoff, “The Cable Family in Indiana’i American Literature, I, 183 — 195, May, 1929. ’ Wykoff (op. cit.) refers to The Abridg ed Compendium of American Genealogy, II, 390. ' On her brother’s request Mary Cable d d research into the maternal parentage of the family. See a manuscrip in the Cable Collection of Tulane University, New Orleans. * See Cable's application for membersliij) in The Massachusetts State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. * W ykoff {op. cit.) refers to Boardman Genealogy 152o—1895, ZBG—367 In 1807 Amos Boardman and his family removed to Indiana, settling near Wilmington in Dearborn County, where one son and five more girls were born. Rebecca, the sixth child in the second marriage, was born in Wilmington on November 20, 1813. Later Amos Boardman moved to Ripley County, where, on the State road from Lawrenceburg to Indianapolis, he opened a popular hostelry for travellers.^ Here Rebecca grew up in a typical pioneer atmosphere. The settlers lived in small cabins, eating simple food and some of them -dressing in bearskin overcoats, beaver hats and buckskin gloves lined with squirrel fur. They were firm believers in Christianity, but though they were convinced that man has to answer for his deeds after death, they lived on easy terms with the world, putting life above property and being often neglectful of their business.® After their marriage, George Washington and Rebecca Cable settled in Lawrenceburg, where Emily, their first child, was born in December, 1834. According to the Lawrenceburg Palladium of October 18, 1834, the young husband followed the trade of a cooper. Later, in 1836, he and his wife removed to Greensburg, Decatur County, Indiana, where he entered some sort of business. However, in the financial crisis of 1837 he failed.9 The adventurous pioneer spirit now asserted itself in George W. Cable and he' decided to try his fortune in New Orleans. In this decision he was probably influenced by his wife’s brother-in-law, who carried on a trade wnth the Indians and often went dow'n the Mississippi as far as that city, from which he is said to have brought back beautiful gifts and glowing accounts of its life.io George W. Cable did not bring his family down to New Orleans at once, judging from a letter headed New Orleans, March 20, 1839, and addressed to Mrs Rebecca Cable, Laughery ' W ykoff (op. cit.) refers to Historg of Dearborn and Ohio Counties, 483. « Wykoff (op. cit.) refers to Logan Esary, A History of Indiana from its Exploration to 1S50, 368, 420— 424. • W ykoff, op. cit. '• Kinne Cable Oechsner, “The Life of George W. Cable”, Times-Picayune (New O rleans), March 29, 1925. Post Office, Ripley County, Indiana.^ ‘ I am well and making money”, he writes, “—- according to an estimate we have cleared $ 2,800 — twenty eight hundred dollars — we have $ 1,500 dollars in Bank which we have no use for — so be content My Rebecca”. It seems probable that he had arrived in New Orleans in 1837 or 1838, and from this letter we niay also infer that he had associates in business. In 1842 we tind him listed in the New Orleans Directory as “Cable, George W. firm of T. R. Borg- stede & Co., 29 Tchoupitoulas st.” And in the same directory we find “Borgstede, J. R. & Co. tvine and liquor store, 29 Tchoupitoulas street”. This is evidently the firm with which George W. Cable was associated, T. R. Borgstede being a misprint for J. R. Borgstede (as later directories indicate). According to a directory for 1843 George W. Cable was still associated with Borgstede’s firm, ! which is stated to be a grocery.! 3 Exactly when G. W. Cable sr. broiight down his family from Indiana to New Orleans does not appear from my sources, but at the time of George Washington’s birth,' in 1844, the family was living in a house on Annunciation Square, which had once been the main building of a colonial plantation. This house has been described by the nd)velist’s elder sister Antoi­ nette Cable Cox. She tells us that a gallery extended the entire length of the house, “so long and so broad that at times it was used for dancing”. On one sid

“ This assumption is given further support by a letter from Rebecca Cable to her husband, headed Columbus, February 18, 1854, in -which she writes that she has been waiting for a letter from him longer than ever except for the memorable winter o ' 1838 -when a letter was lost. *' New-Orleans Directory for 18i2, Pitts & Clarke, New Orleans, 1842. '* Michel Jt Co. New-Orleans Annual and Commercial Directory, for 18i3. I Kinne Cable Oechsner, “The Life of George W. Cable”, Tim es- Picayune (New Orleans), March 29, 1925. the Cable family lived in this house indicates that Cable’s father was, at that lime, a fairly prosperous man.

We may now turn to an attempt to discover something about the characters of Cable’s parents. His daughter Lucy writes: i® The father was a man full of energy and enterprise, of unusual height and commanding presence. “I can see him now,” wrote one of his daughters, many years later, “at the age of thirty-six — five feet eleven inches and carrying well his weight of 194 pounds — imposing in full regimentals as aide-de-camp to General Tracy, when the ‘Eighth of January’ brought out the Militia in grand parade, to celebrate the battle of New Orleans.”

And Kinne Cable Oechsner quotes the following from a book of memoirs by Antoinette Cable Cox: But what we loved best was his [their father’s] evening visit to the nursery in his robe de chambre of soft Scotch plaid, when he got down on all fours to play bear with us, or took his flute and danced around to his own music. Joyousness was the ruling note in his character and it never lost its cheery tone in the days of adversity that followed several years afterward.

Something more may be found out of a few letters from him to his wife. Mx)st important is that he was obviously interested in poetry and had also a certain gift for writing poems him­ self. He quotes Burns and mentions Pope, and several of the letters are wholly or partly in verse. His adventurous pioneer spirit has already been mentioned, and this was not a trait that disappeared in him with youth for, as we shall see, in 1850, at the age of 39, he planned to emigrate with his family to Cuba. Of bis mother Cable wrote at the time of her death: To her indomitable energy she added an unconquerable buoy­ ancy of spirits, an intellectual ambition, a keen relish for social relations and a moral austerity naturally to be looked for in a descendant of the Pilgrims. Her supreme and constant characteristic was an heroic spirit. This feature belonged to the quietest hours and simplest tasks as much as to the greatest emergencies. She had

■s Bikle, op. cit., 2. ■“ Op. cit. 2 8 at all times so emphatic a preference for the best way rather than the easier way of doing things, that often she almost seemed to choose the more difficult method because of its difficulty. She pursued all her tasks with a positive gaiety of temper. She had no such intolerance for anything else in life as she had for a spirit of indolence, whether it leaned toward tase or pleasure. She had many features of the artistic temperament: abhorrence of all ungenuineness and an intense love of phe beautiful. She had a passion for flowers, and in the days of prosperity these were her most cherished wealth, and in the times of her severest adversity, when almost her whole means of livelihood depended upon her own diligence, she more than once not only surrounded herself with flowers where she had found none, but'by the glad contagion of her energy set her whole neighborhood to gardening.”

From Kinne Cable Oechsner, daughter of Cable’s younger brother James, we learn that both his mother and father were I studious r e a d e r s . i have already poihted out that the father knew something about poetry, and the mother’s interest in books is corroborated by two passages in her letters to her husband. During the time that theirj home in New Orleans was dissolved she wrote him from Indiana, asking him to take care of their books, and in another lUter she requested him to send her Bulwer’s play The Lady .of Lyons.^^ These facts are important because several authorilties maintain that Cable grew up in a home where literature |was regarded as sinful. To state categorically which traits! of character of Cable’s were inherited from or developed under the influence of his father or his mother is, of course, impossible but some indica­ tions may be attempted. j Both parents were full of energy, and it is therefore not surprising to find energy to be one of the dominant features in Cable’s character. His sense of humour seems to have come mainly from his father, while all the traits of character attributed by Cable to his mother may also be attributed to him. His niece writes 20 that accordijig to a family tradition there were two strong opposing flows in his veins. One was

Bikle, op. cit., 4. ** Times-Picaynne (New O rleans), March i29, 1925. '* The letters are dated April 30 and F ebruary 18, 1854. "I Kinne Cable Oechsner, op. cit., Timls-Picayune (New Orleans), March 29, 1925. 9 pulsing with a warm love of life, a keen joy in living; this was the blood of his Virginia forefathers. The other was cooler, a little critical of too eager an enthusiasm, quieter, more reserved; and that was the Puritan blood of the North. These conflicting forces in Cable’s character explain much that is otherwise hard to understand, for instance his artistic interest in, and admiration for. Creole life and his obvious wish to reform it. We must, however, not underestimate the influence of milieu, and we shall see how the vicissitudes of life made the mother a dominant factor in the boy’s education. CHAPTER II

BOYHOOD

The New Orleans in which George Washington Cable grew up was a rapidly expanding city of more than 100,000 in­ habitants whose main occupalion was commerce. The purchase of Louisiana by the United States in 1803 had had a beneficial effect both on the flat-boat trade with the upper Mississippi valley and on ocean-going traffic. Later, commerce on the Mississippi was further stimulated by the advent of steam navigation. The number of steaihboats on that river increased from 21 in 1814 to 989 in 1830. The colonization of the whole area of the Mississippi valley resulted in an enormous pro­ duction of meat and grain. These products together with tobacco and cotton from further south were brought to New Orleans, there to be unloaded and reloaded on oce^n-going ships. On the other hand, coffee, sugat, and European manu­ factures were imported to the city and brought back to the new settlements. The population also increased, though, because of the absence of manufacturing, not so rapidly as did commerce. New Orleans was becoming a very cosmopolitan city. Before 1803 its white inhabitants had been mainly of French and Spanish origin, but after the purcl^ase “Americans” and European, particularly Irish and German, immigrants began pouring into it. Another influx, of whites, mulattoes and Negro slaves, came from the West Indian islands, mostly between 1803 and 1810. Unfortunately the city attracted adveinturers, criminals and riff-raff from the whole world, and it soon acquired a reputa­ tion as a lawless city. A particularly unruly element was the river men, “the Kaintocks”, who visited New Orleans in 11 thousands every year. Sometimes they literally terrorized the city, invading and wrrecking respectable coffee-houses and restaurants. They were consequently heartily disliked by everybody but those who earned their living by catering for their needs. The police seem to have been unable to cope with the situation. Another serious drawback to the city was its climate, which is humid and enervating all the year round and too hot during the five or six summer months to allow Europeans to work hard. Aided by malaria and bad nourishment the climate sapped the energy even of the most pushing of the immigrants. Furthermore, almost every summer the city was visited by epidemic yellow fever or cholera, or both. These epidemics took a frightful toll of life, especially among the unacclimatized immigrants, and often brought commerce to a standstill in summer. Soon after the Louisiana purchase the limits of the Vieux Carr6 grew too narrow for the swelling population, and as a consequence an “American” quarter was erected below Canal Street, which became a frontier between American and Creole culture and ideas of life. It must be stressed that George W. Cable was born and grew up in the American section and, for that matter, never lived in the Vieux Carr^. George Washington was the fifth child of the Cables. In 1846 another son, James Boardman, was born, but the year before two children had died from scarlet fever. This left George with two elder sisters and a younger brother. The fact that from the beginning he enjoyed the company of two sisters and later of a brother no doubt helped to develop in him his interest in social relations; for he always kept in touch with other people and never lived the secluded life of a scholar. Cable’s father certainly prospered in business up till 1849, for in 1848 he could afford giving a party for Mary Louise, his oldest child, vdth two hundred guests.i In a directory for

‘ This party has been described by Antoinette Cable Cox, a sister of the novelist’s, who was at that time only six years old and is therefore a rather unreliable witness. But allowing for some exaggeration, the party must have been a big one. For the description see Kinne Cable Oechsner, op. cit., Times-Picagune (New O rleans), March 29, 1925. 2 * 12

1846 2 he is listed as being still associated with the firm of Borgstede, grocers, which had by then imoved to 26 New Levee Street. By 1849, however, he seems to have founded a firm of his own, for in Cohen’s New Orleans and Lafayette Direc­ tory for that year we find this item: “Cable G. & W. & Co, Merchants’ Exchange Saloon, Wine store, 32 New Levee”. The novelist himself has given an account of his father’s activities which evidently applies to the time before the winter of 1849 —1850. In New Orleans, he states, his father entered into business, making a specialty of the fiirnishing of supplies to steamboats and soon acquiring what in those days was con­ sidered a fortune. He became an ownet of steamboats and of a lumbering and brickmaking enterprise on the Tchefuncta River, some forty miles from the city.^ In her biography of her father, Lucy Cable Bikle says that his childhood and early boyhood parsed as quietly and as happily as those years should.^ This ma!^ be true about the five first years of his life, but to judge from the correspondence between his parents from 1850 to 1856, these years were a constant struggle against poverty, a fact that cannot but have left an impression on the boy’s sensitive mind, as is indeed evidenced by his first letter to his father.s Putting money into river steamboats could be a risky matter, which Cable’s father experienced when two boats into which he had put money were wrecked by fire.® This seems to have taken place in the winter of 1849— 1850. For in a letter dated November 10, 1853, he writes to his wife that he has better prospects than he has had in the last fiur years; and Cohen’s New Orleans and Lafayette Directory for 1850, printed in 1849, lists Cable’s firm but it is not listed in any later New Orleans directory. Anyhow, the disalster, which evidently brought about the end of the father’s | firm, occurred before May 1850, for on the 5th of that month he writes a letter to his wife, piartly in verse, which proves that she and the

* New Orleans Annual and Commercial Register. > Bikld, op. cit., 3. ‘ Op. cit., 5. ' Ibid., 9. • Ibid., 10. 13 children have gone to Indiana; and it also gives the reason: “The place of parting soon is said j It was in New Orleans j The cause is plain — Oh dreadful fate / It was for want of Means”, Kinne Cable Oechsner says that, after the collapse of his firm, Cable sr. sent his wife and children to her father and mother in Indiana.^ But Wykoff * states that Amos Board- man, Rebecca Cable’s father, died in 1839 and that his wife died in 1840, and consequently Rebecca Cable must have gone to visit other relatives of hers — possibly her uncle Charles or one of her sisters or brothers.» On May 29, 1850, her husband wrote her another letter from New Orleans, which shows that he again faced the future full of hope. He tells her that he has sent her a paper that will give her news of the Cuban expedition; and he goes on to say: Cuba is free. Alow [sic] me to say hurra for Cuba for with your consent I am an inhabitant of that island in less than two jears from this time. Bee dent be angry — would you not like to live in Havana with the Stars and Stripes waving over More Castle Yes — you would — your patriotic feeling though a woman would say Yes “ * This plan of his was, however, never carried out. Soon his difficulties were augmented by an accident of which he told his wife in a letter. This letter is in two parts, the first of which is headed New Orleans, July 4, 1850. Here he writes: You say “I have a hard time of it”. True — but do not suppose for a moment that I dispair [sjc]. No Rebecca it is not in me to give up under affliction or adversity — you know me — no one else in this world does. True I am doing nothing now and cannot pay my expenses but I fancy I can look through the misty future and see yet something in prospective by which I may be able to “be myself again”.

The second part, under date of August 1, 1850, gives the bad news of the accident.

’ Op. cit., Times-Picagune (New O rleans), April 5, 1925. * Op. cit. * Kinne Cable Oechsner is also mistaken about the time of George W. Cable senior’s second financial disaster which according to her took place when George W. Cable junior was fourteen years old. 14

*** things went on in their natural channel until Wednesday the 17th ulto on which evening I retired to my,bed at my usual hour, and I know no further until about 6 o’clock on Thursday morning. I found myself on my bed surrounded by my friends and on enquiring of them what the matter was 1 was informed that on the previous night I had got up in my sleep and walk [s/c] off the Gallery falling about fifteen feet dislocating my shoulder and breaking my thigh bone about 8 inches above the knee. He goes on to tell her that he is now in hospital but assures her that he does not feel discouraged. On September 1, Rebecca replies to this letter, telling him that she is scraping together money -with the intention of returning to New Orleans, and one week later she writes from Louisville where she is waiting w-ith her children for a boat to take them down the Ohio. The children are longing for their father, she tells him. In 1850 George W. Cable sr. was appointed notary public, an office that he retained for a few years.i® He also entered business anew but was not very successful, it seems. He undertook several trips up and down the Mississippi and other rivers, but it does not appear plearly from his letters what his business was. In a letter to bis wife from Memphis, dated January 24, 1851, he shows bis deep affection for his family, “You are not absent from my mind”, he writes, “either awake or in sleep I can think of nrithing but you ^nd the children.” I A letter from him to his vfife, beaded New Orleans, May 12, 1852, shows that she was again! absent from the city; she may have gone with the children to Indiana. The principal news in it is that business is dull but his health improving. Whether she returned to New Orleans that year does not appear from the correspondence, but in July, 1853, she was in Columbus, Indiana, for there is a letter of the 8th of that month from her husband ac dressed to her in that town. There she remained with her children until at least November, 1854,” having great difficulties in making both ends meet. « See editions for 1851, 1852, 1853, and 1854 of Cohen’s Neuj Or(eans Directory. ’* The correspondence between her and! her husband from July, August, November, December, 1853, and fromj February, April, May, July, November, 1854, proves this conclusively. 15

In a letter from New Orleans of July 27, 1853, George W. Cable sr. tells his wife that he has been cheated in business by an associate; but he has not lost hope for he writes^ “I intend as soon as the Ohio & the health permit to send for all of you or come myself — I shall have a home prepared for you.” Evidently, they had been forced to give up their home in New Orleans. This may, however, have been a blessing in disguise for no one knows what might have happened if she had remained in the South during that summer,,the summer of the worst yellow fever epidemic that ever visited the Crescent City. We learn something about this epidemic from the father’s letters. On August 24 he writes from Biloxi, Mississippi: Dear Wife and Daughter *** I am as well as ever in my life yet in the region of the worst epidemic that any city was ever visited with — the deaths are about 300 pr day and on the increase — Business has stopped in a measure New Orleans is almost deserted **'

And in a letter written on board a river steamboat on November 10, 1853, he says that he has had a time of it — “I cant put it to paper now.” And again on December 21 of the same year he writes to his wife from New Orleans: O, God — wife how glad I was you were not here to witness the distress caused by that most awfull scurge [s/c] — You cant imagine the suffering with which all were visited -— I have seen 74 bodies laying above ground at one time in one cemetary alone * * *

In Columbus, Indiana, on February 18, 1854, his wife writes a reply to this letter. Her circumstances seem to be sorry indeed for she says that “to think of the loss of that [50 dollars] or misfortune to yourself was either of them uncomfortable circumstances for me to sit here in my almost blind and destitute condition and think upon.” And she exclaims, “O is that happy time approaching when we may again have a place to call home, and you there vdth us.” The conditions of their life in Indiana have evidently in­ fluenced also the mood of young George Washington, for he writes in the same letter to his father: I would like very much to know what business you are in also 16 when you are coining after us for we are so lonelj’ without you that it makes us very unhappy if you were here I would feel perfectly contented, but as you are not here I am far from happy ***12

A letter, headed Columbus, April 30, 1854, from Rebecca Cable to her husband also contains a few lines from the nine- year-old boy. “I would tell you about my studies but I have not space”, he writes. This is the first indication I have found of his studies, but it seems highly probable that he had attended school even in New Orleans, for in 1847 the State educational system of Louisiana had been reorganized and a number of free schools set up throughout New Orleans. At any rate he was able to read and write by the time of his long stay in Indiana, in 1853 and 1854, and he used his ability to read, not children’s fairy tales, it seems, but rather heavy stuff for a boy of that age. His mother was evidently en­ couraging his serious studies, to judge from an unpublished manuscript of his, entitled “My P o litic s ” , in which he tells us that at nine years of age he was memorizing the Declara­ tion of Independance “under a mothen’s promise of an American flag for reward”. And he adds: “I never forgot its great principles least of all the inherent equality of all men in civil and political rights, rights to which all men are born and which are not something earned by, and only by, bloody wars.” Even at that early age he was puzzled to know how men could declare such ideal truths and yet hold other men in slavery. From the same source, “My Politics”, w'e learn something more about his reading at that age. \yhen he was barely nine he read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he vVrites, adding that he preserved no impressions from it. According to his diary, however, he had wept while reading it but had not reflected. He was evidently a sensitive boy! No\lr the fact of his having The mother states that she has copied the letter from a slate on uhich they boy had written it. The letter is printed in full by Bikli (op. cit., 9). ” Cable wrote it as a preface to a new edlitio n of The Silent South, but for some reason it was not included. Part of it is to be found in rough draft in a diary of Cable s under entries for January, 1889. Bikle used extracts from it in her biography. 17 read a novel at the age of nine is interesting in view of his daughter Lucy’s statementthat in his parental home there was no allowance made for novel-reading of any sort, novels being strictly forbidden among old as well as young. Are we then to assume that the boy broke this domestic regulation in order to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin? This does not seem to tally with the picture one gets of his character, and I think it more probable that his mother herself put the novel into his hands, considering it a book with a good moral purpose. About the age of ten he also memorized the larger part of Scott’s “Lady of the Lake”, from which he loved to quote in his later life.i< But history and not fiction was his principal interest. “History was a delight,” he writes in “My Politics”. “At ten I had read Hume’s England.” The unhappiness of Rebecca Cable and her children in­ creased as time passed on. On May 28, 1854, she writes to her husband; “It seems to me that we have scarce ever sat at the table but some one of them-[the children] has sighed out a wish that Pa was here.” And on July 2 of the same year: “They [the children] like myself are quite dispirited indeed they do not seem themselves at all.” At last, on November 1, 1854, her husband writes her from Memphis, asking her to return to New Orleans, and a letter of March 1, 1855, from him to her proves that she was back there by then. Two letters in the parents’ correspondence for 1856 show' that the father was then travelling about. Thus he writes from Pass Christian, Mississippi, on June 1 of that year: “I am in for it here untill we are ready to open then the captain says I may have a day or two to myself.” But it does not appear what his occupation was. In Mygatt’s and Co’s Directory for 1857 he is, however, listed as a deputy constable. He did not recover his health and on February 28, 1859, his forty-eighth birthday, he died. His wife was left with her four children without resources. At the time of his father’s death George Washington Cable was attending a high school on Second and Magazine Streets. He was obviously interested in literature for he became editor

“ Bikle, op. cit., 8. 2 18

of a school review called The Spirit of the TimesA^ A former schoolmate of his, A. B. Brittin, later mayor of New Orleans, has told us some reminiscences of him as a schoolboy. "George was always gentle, even as a boy,” he says, “and I never heard him say an ugly or unkind thing about anyone even in those school days, and in fact never in all my life. You know boys are fond of boasting, and if they are angry love to tell about what they will do. But never George. He was good at writing even in those days and I recall an incident which happened just before George left school. At that time the high school scholars were graduated from a building that had once been a Methodist church on Felicity street. Dr. Brewer was a director of the high school and for some reason two of the best essays written by the scholars were to be read before him, and George’s and mine were selected to be read. I remember how well George read his, and what a good essay it was.” 18 But Cable’s life during those years was not school-work and hard study exclusively; he found time also for play. He had a strong impulse for making things and a constant yearning for the water. “On a very small scale I was early a ship­ builder,” he tells us himself,*^ “and my mother often let me walk alone across the city, to the riverside, to stand and gaze at the great sailing-ships that lay moored against the wharves as far up and down the stream as my sight would carry — three, four, even five abreast. I lovpd to study the spars, blocks and ropes of their beautiful and stately rigging.” The ships carried flags of many liations but most often, after those of the United States andj Great Britain, he saw the flag of the free city of Bremen; “its ships brought untold hundreds of flaxen-haired immigrants.” Living in a stoneless country, he loved to look at the piles of stones that the ships had carried as ballast, and he always came away from them with “a cabinet of mineral wonders” distending his pockets.'^ He could also waste hours watching the Negro gangs as they

“ According to a letter from John T. Sa;wyer, dated March 6, 1883. '• Kinne Cable Oechsner, op. cit., Times-Picayune (New Orleans), April 5, 1925. ” “Some of My Pets”, Youth’s Companion, Septem ber 5, 1901. 19 pressed bale after bale of cotton into the presses.i® Fishing in the canals or bayous and keeping rabbits were other boyhood occupations. This sketch of Cable’s boyhood, which, for lack of material, has given more infbrmation about his parents than about himself, has shown that, on account of the vicissitudes of life, his mother had opportunity to be a more decisive influence in his life than his father. She was a Puritan of New England stock, and later in his life Cable gave expression to his admiration of the New England Puritans. In a manuscript entitled “Northampton: An Old New England Town” he writes: “He [the Puritan] was dominated by a spiritual passion for wife, home and family; a passion for learning; a passion for industry, economy and thrift; a passion for truth and righteousness; a passion for law and government; and a certain writer of today chooses his words well when he calls these Puritan passions ‘a fiery zeal.’ They were the blood and life of the New England Idea.” And in a letter to his mother, dated November 20, 1871, he openly acknowledges his in­ debtedness to her; “All I am, in mind, in morals, in social position, in attainments, or in any good thing I owe mainly to my noble mother.” '» Bikl6, op. cit., 7. Ibid., 42. CHAPTER III

T H E W A R

After his father’s death George had to leave school, and he and Mary Louise, his nineteen-year-old sister, shouldered the support of the family. George, as we have seen, had been a studious boy, and he would certainly have profited by a more liberal school education. But he got another education: in the hard school of life. And he did not, as so many people do, throw away his school books when he left school but continued his studies on his own. Mary Louise became a teacher and George obtained a place in a customs warehouse,i where his father had once been employed.^ At this time Cable was not interested in newspapers but “in the things we find in books”, principles, especially principles of life, being everything to him. But he was not

‘ G. W. Cable, “New Orleans Before the Capture”, Centura, April, 1885. * In the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans, there is the following document: Custom House, New Orleans, Nov. 27/57 Superintendent of Ware House’s Desk From and after the first day of D ecember next, 1857 you are authorized to perform the duties of marker at Private Bonded Store No 7 and to see that according tb Law and Regulations each package (except Raisins — one in tin being deemed sufficient) should be stamped before being stored. By order of the 'Collector J. Oscar Howell Ware House Superintendent To G. W. Cable Esq. New Orleans 21 politically indifferent during the crucial years when the United States were drifting towards civil war. At sixteen he was for “Union, Slavery and a White Man’s Government”. But when secession came, it seemed a dreadful thing to him, and he wondered at men and women rejoicing in it. Never­ theless, not having learnt really to think for himself, he soon hurrahed for Jefferson Davis.s When the guns of the South opened fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Cable was still working in the customs ware­ house, but it was not long before the customs warehouses began to show “a growing roominess, then emptiness”, and had to be closed. The one in which he had been working was turned into a sword-bayonet factory, and so he had to look around for some other work. He found employment with a firm of commission merchants in Common Street, but with the blockade closing in on the city trade became slack and consequently he had leisure to be among the boys who gathered in Coliseum Place every afternoon to watch the dress parade of the Confederate Guards. i This was the flower of the home guard. The merchants, bankers, underwriters, judges, real-estate owners, and capitalists of the Anglo-American part of the city were “all present and accounted for” in that long line. Gray heads, hoar heads, high heads, bald heads. * * * We boys saw nothing pathetic in this array of old men. To us there was only rich enjoyment of the scene. If there was anything solemn about it, why did the band play polkas?* The boys soon felt like “blase old soldiers”. All of them were able to beat the drum, all of them knew every bugle-call and “could go through the manual of arms and the facings like a drill-sergeant”.^ Cable evidently found time .also to cross Canal Street into the Vieux Carr6 to watch the Creoles drilling for he gives this description of them: Down on the steamboat landing, our famous Levee, a superb body of Creoles drilled and paraded in dark-blue uniform. The orders were given in French; the manual was French; the move­ ments were quick, short, nervy.* But the sight of the deserted French market makes him exclaim, “Ah, the nakedness of that once crowded and roaring • “My Politics”. 22

mart.” There was also a Foreign Legion being set up in the city, and he was amazed to see “how many whom every one had supposed to be Americans or ‘citizens of Louisiana’ bloomed out as British, or French, or Spanish subjects”.i Conditions in New Orleans rapidly deteriorated. Gold and silver money was replaced by a paper currency, and to make things worse the state had one paper issue and the city another. Prices rose as people lost €aith in their money. The lack of currency was soon remedied by enterprising mer­ chants who started issuing money themselves.^ “What a mess it was!” writes Cable,i who, as a cashier, had opportunity to study the effects of the currency operations. From the beginning of the war the northern leaders had realized the importance of New Orleans to the Confederacy, and so they decided that Grant was to go down the Mississippi while Farragut and Butler were to sail up it in order to capture the city. As Admiral Farragut passed through the mouth of the river with more then forty ships, the anxiety of the New Orleaneans mounted. Cable, in his store, was all ears. I used to hear them [his elders] — standing with my back turned, pretending to be looking at something down street, but with both ears turned backward and stretched wide. They said under their breath that there was not a single measure of defense that wa'S not behindhand. And they spoke truly.'

While Farragut’s fleet was bombarding Forts Jackson and St. Philip below the city, its inhabitants discussed the art of hiding valuables. When the bombardment had lasted for five days and nights, the northern admiral decided to force a passage. Early in the morning of Ajiril 24, 1862, seventeen ships started to go up the river. The cables stretched across it in an attempt to stop the enemy we|re broken through, and now the alarm-bells were sounded in ihe city. Here is Cable’s eye-witness account of what happened; I shall not try to describe the day the alarm-bells told us that the city was in danger and called every mkn to his mustering-point. The children poured out from the school gates and ran crying to their homes, meeting their sobbing mothers at their thresholds. The men fell into ranks. I was left entirely alone in charge of the

‘ New Orleans City Guide, 30. 23

store where I was employed. Late in the afternoon, receiving orders to close it, I did so, and went home. But I did not stay. I went to the river-side. There until far into the night I saw hundreds of drays carrying cotton out of the presses and yards to the wharves, where it was fired. The glare of those sinuous miles of flame set men and women weeping and wailing thirty miles away on the farther shore of Lake Pontchartrain. But the next day was the day of terrors. During the night fear, wrath and sense of betrayal had run through the people as the fire had run through the cotton. You have seen, perhaps, a family fleeing with lamentations and wringing of hands out of a burning house; multiply it by thousands: that was New Orleans, though the houses were not burning.*

Everybody tried to get away from the city, but Cable went to his store. I stood in the rear door of our store. Canal street, soon after reopening it. The junior of the firm was within. I called him to look toward the river. The masts of the cutter Washington were slowly tipping, declining, sinking — down she went The gun-boat moored next her began to smoke all over and then to blaze. My employers lifted up their heels and left the city — left their goods and their affairs in the hands of one mere lad — no stranger would have thought I had reached fourteen — and one big German porter. I closed the doors, sent the porter to his place in the Foreign Legion, and ran to the levee to see the sights. The river was overflowing the top of the levee. A rainstorm began to threaten. “Are the Yankee ships in sight?” I asked of an idler. He pointed out the tops of their naked masts as they showed up across the huge bend of the river. They were engaging the batteries of Camp Chal- mette — the old field of Jackson’s renown. Presently that was over. Ah, me! I see them now as they come slowly round Slaughterhouse Point into full view, silent, grim and terrible; black with men, heavy with deadly portent; the long-banished Stars and Stripes flying against the frowning sky. Oh, for the Mississippil the Mississippil Just then here she came down upon them. But how? Drifting helplessly, a mass of flames. The crowds on the levee howled and screamed with rage.*

In the afternooii Cable joined a crowd in Common Street, shouting with the rest, “Hurrah for Jeff Davis!” A lot of people were brandishing weapons and shouting imprecations, and there came the objects of their threats. Two officers of the United States Navy were walking abreast, unguarded and alone, looking not to right or left, never frowning, never flinching, while the mob screamed in tiieir ears, shook 3 24

cocked pistols in their faces, cursed and crowded and gnashed upon them. So, through the gates of death, these two men walked to the City Hall to demand the town’s surrender. It was one of the bravest deeds I ever saw done.'

A few days later, on May 1, General Benjamin Butler took charge of New Orleans. He has giv6n a description of the conditions he found.® He speaks of the absolutely starving condition of the people of the city, a matter that required instant attention. Flour was sixty dollars a barrel and little was to be had. And the former Attorney-General of Louisiana told him that one day he had had nothing to give his children to eat but two ginger cakes. Another task Butler set himself was to clean the city, which he found at places “simply astonishingly filthy with rotting matter”. I learned [he writes] that New Orleans was a city very easy to clean of that sort of matter. It had no sewers, but only drains, which were above ground and could easily be gotten at. I found that these ditches and drains had not been cleaned for many years.®

But whatever Butler did to improve conditions in the city, his rule was far from popular, and Cable tells us in “My Politics” that his attitude towards the conflict was very much influenced by Ben Butler, who tried to make the US government hateful to the New Orleaneans. Particularly resented were the hanging of a man who had removed the United States flag from the Mint, and his “Woman’s Order”, according to which any woman who might “by word, gesture, or movement show contempt for any officer or soldier” Wjas to be regarded as a “woman of the town plying her vocation” and treated as such. By order of the military government all persons over eighteen had to swear allegiance to the Federal Government or surrender their property and leave^ the city. As early as September 30, 1862, Cable’s mother rendered a statement of her property, “in accordance with General Orders No 76”, and

‘ B. Butler, Butler’s Book, Boston, 1892. My source is an extract from that book given in The World from Jackson Square, edited by E. S. Basso. * Basso, op. eit., 227. 25 claimed to be an enemy of the United StatesJ However, not until the spring of 1863, it seems, did the authorities insist upon her departure, but then she obtained a doctor’s certi­ ficate * stating that she was too weak to travel — “her health has become so feeble as to render the comforts of home a necessity” — and she was allowed to remain. But not so his two elder sisters, “two harmless girls of twenty-two and twenty”, who upon registering as enemies of the United States were banished from the city. And their brother, aged eighteen but looking several years younger and completely incapable of military duty, was allowed to accompany them through the Federal lines into the State of Mississippi.® Later Cable’s mother and brother James also left the city for that state.^ On October 9, 1863, Cable joined the Confederate army and was enlisted as a private in the 4th Mississippi Cavalry Regiment.i® If we may trust the memory of an old comrade in arms of his, this event took place at Gallatin near Hazle- hurst, Mississippi.il And if we may rely on another source of the same kind, he was wounded the very next day.12 The enlistment document 13 gives the following data concerning the new Confederate soldier: Age 19, Eyes Grey, Hair Brown, Complexion Dark, Feet 5 Inches 5, Occupation Clerk. That Cable looked anything but a soldier is proved by an incident which is told by Charles M. Clay 1* who states that he had heard Cable tell it himself. A squadron of Federal cavalry were out on a raid south of the Red River. The company in which Cable served were pursuing the raiders.

’ According to a certificate from the Provost Marshal’s Office. * Dated May 26, 1863, and signed N. Bailey. • Kinne Cable Oechsner, op. cit., Times-Picayune (New Orleans), April 5, 1925. '• See Descriptive List and Account of Pay and Clothing of Private G. W. Cable. '* According to a letter to Cable from J. A. Covington, headed Hazle- h u rst, M ississippi, February 21, 1898. ** See a letter to Cable from W. H. Pascoe, dated New Orleans, F ebruary 20, 1898. ** Descriptive List and Account of Pay and Clothing of Private G. W. Cable. >• C. M. Clay, “George W. Cable”, Critic, October 8, 1881. 26

They stopped at a plantation to ask a planter about the route of the enemy. Shaking his head the" planter started a mechani­ cal enumeration of his losses, until he suddenly caught sight of Cable. With his eyes magnetically fastened on him he asked, “My son, do you belong to the army?” Before anybody had had time to answer, the captain called, “Come on!” and they were off. Bat it was not long before the planter was seen coming after them on a horse. Riding up beside Cable he repeated his question. Cable raised himself in his stirrups and bowed assent. The planter, dropping his rains and throwing up his arms, then exclaimed, “Great Heavens, Abe Lincoln told the truth — we are robbing the cradle and the grave.” In February, 1864, the young soldier was wounded a second time, by a shot in his left armpit. He recovered rapidly, however,!® and once more back in Service he was detailed vfith Major G. S. Sebastian on March 10, 1864. Being unsatis­ fied, however, with the part he had played in the war, he planned an attempt to be transferred to a more heroic regiment, as e\idenced by the following letter to his brother James: Jackson Slliss. November 29th 1864 My dear brother; I have just received your long and welcoibe letter of the 23d inst., and hasten to reply. Your full account of your misfortunes is what I have been waiting for, having already heard a smattering of the bad news from Spangler of your Regt., but it gives me great pain to find that all is true as he said. * * * I am sadly out of heart about your great loss and I suppose we can do nothing better than join some good artillery and let the cavalry go for good. Let me know what you think of it; how you can stand the service, etc. etc. Be assured that if you do go to Art’y or Inf’t’y, I will be with you, and hand in hand, and shoulder to shoulder we will bear each other’s toils, and share each other’s pleasures. *** Do you know, Jim, as much as I deplore the loss of your horse and equipments, and as much as I dread the hardships of the Art’y service for you, I hate to think more than all the^e, that your first experience with the enemy was running from them. *** Don’t mistake me I you are not to blame. But older soldiers ought to have known better than to go to a house when within hearing of the enemy. And the 3d La. was stampeded I Oh, Jim, I am sick of it. Sick of it Let us leave such men, and go somewhere, anywhere W here we can either one » Bikl4, op. cit., 20. 27

of us say “I have met the enemy and did not flinch.” How lament­ able our experiences in this war! One brought out of a disgraceful skirmish with a slight flesh wound before the fight was done, the other hunted through the swamps, his horse and clothes captured, and himself escaping by precipitate flight. One a member of the cowardly 4th Miss, and the other one of Lay’s invincibles. Oh pshaw 1 Don’t suppose I blame you, for I know, you could not do any better; but let’s get out of it; * * * as we will undoubtedly have to leave the cavalry let us hurry and make our arrangements. Ever your loving Bro Geo. Cable

We see how deeply he had taken to heart the reverses of the southern forces. It is also characteristic of him to put great demands on himself, a slight flesh wound and a skir­ mish being in his opinion nothing. He probably dreamed of taking a heroic part in the great battles. His religious fervour and his affection for his mother are also in evidence during these turbulent years. Many years later a soldier comrade wrote to him: “I recollect asking you one evening when we were to retire — how it were you could get down on your knees in prayer — when there was so much revelry going on around you. Your reply was, I promised Mother to pray for her every day —” i® He admonished his brother James to read his Bible and say his prayers without fear of com mentand to his mother he wrote: “It rejoices me to know of any pleasure you enjoy, for I am constantly in fear that your courage will fail you & that you will succumb to your troubles. But I should remember how all my life I have seen you ‘suffer & be strong.’ ” The war seems to have taken Cable all over the states of Mississippi and Alabama. In a letter to his brother from Jackson, Mississippi, he states that since he last wrote him he has been “all over creation”, to Holly Springs, Oxford, Grenada and Canton; one letter to his mother is written in

'• J. A. Covington in a letter of F ebruary 21, 1898. ” In a letter from Jackson, Mississippi, dated November 26, 1864. Bikl^, op. cit., 17— 18. •* A letter dated April 16, 1865. Ibid., 22—23. •• Dated November 26, 1864. Ibid., 17—18. ” Ibid., 21—22. 3 * 28 camp near West Point, Mississippi, another in Gainsville,

Alabama, and still another 22 near Kosciusko, en route from Jackson to Macon; and an undated letter to him, signed Mrs E. C. Nourse, mentions that during the war he visited Magnolia, Mississippi. Some time after November, 1864, Cable was transferred to the field staff of Major General Wirt' Adams and later, for a short time, to that of General Forrest.^® These were certainly events that proved important to his intellectual development. He had used the spare moments of camp life to study mathe­ matics, Latin grammar, and the Bible.At nineteen, nearly twenty, he had also begun, for the first time, as he states himself in “My Politics”, to have thoughts and convictions of his own. As Georgia was threatening to secede from the Confederacy, he realized that the cause he was fighting for was one doomed to failure. We shall go to pieces as soon as we are safe from outside enemies, he thought. And he was not afraid of venting his opinion. Asked why then he fought for the South, he answered, “Because I am a citizen of this government, a soldier by its laws. Sworn into service and ordered, not to think, but, to fight.” 3 His connection with headquarters stimulated his ability to think for himself because it brought him into contact with “men of choice intelligence”, with whom, in spite of his young age and inferior rank, he had interesting discussions. Never­ theless: “At twenty I was still, in far too many things a very child for thoughtlessness.” The thoughtlessness obviously consisted mostly in the fact that he did not see the wrong of fighting for slavery. Conditions of life were also much better at headquarters, which was undoubtedly beneficial to jCable’s health, but his sensitive conscience was not quite at rest for being so well off when others endured the strenuous camp life. For he writes

« Ibid., 22—23. “ Of March 20, 1865. ” At the end of November, 1864, he was evidently not doing staff work — see his letter to his brother, pp. 26—'•27. See also “My Politics”. ** George E. Waring, “George W. Cable”, Century, XXIII, 602—605, February, 1882. 29 to his mother under date of March 20, 1865: “It is raining quite briskly but thanks to a merciful Providence I am safe from the storm and am only aware of the rain outside by the patting on the roof of our snow-white wall-tent. Poor soldiers, why should I be so much more comfortable than many who have breasted the storm of war from the beginning?”

A few weeks later 25 he writes again a letter to his mother which reveals another characteristic in young Cable: his absolute reliance on the Bible for moral guidance. He tells her how a major accused him, unjustly, of having stolen a few saucers. “I could honorably as a gentleman and a soldier have prof erred charges against the old Major,” he adds, “but it is not in the bible and I shall not hold any malice against a man who was never taught to control his temper.” In April, 1865, the war ended and in the following month Cable was back in his native city, a paroled prisoner of war, so poor that he had to wear his grey uniform in contravention of military orders.*® “ On April 8, 1865. ” Bikle, op. cit., 24—25. The two letters printed there are now in the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans. CHAPTER IV

AFTER THE WAR: OFFICE WORK. SURVEYNG AND JOURNALISM

If the two years in the Confederate army had been a hard time which had told both on his health and good spirits,^ Cable had been assured of his daily bread at least. But now he had to begin anew to earn his own living, and this time in a New Orleans utterly impoverished by the war. The city had lost its former commercial position, and the chaos of the reconstruction period made recovery of lost ground extremely difficult. The years between 1865 and 1877 may, indeed, be said to be the blackest in the city’s history. Fortune-hunting adventurers from the North took over leading positions both in politics and commerce. Political corruption was the order of the day. Freed Negroes streamed into the city from the surrounding countryside and they were easily lead by the men in power. The unstable conditions in the city led to its being occupied by Federal troops and placed under control of General Sheridan. Thousands of ex-soldiers were looking for employment in New Orleans, so Cable was lucky in finding a job at once, even though it was an unremunerative one as a clerk and errand- boy.^ Quite naturally, considering the political situation, he

‘ During the war a friend of his, Bettie Coleman, had written to Cable: “I think too that you require, absolutely need, letters from your friends; for you write sometimes in anything but a lively strain; and if your surroundings are not the most delightful in the world, so much the more is cheerful news necessary to you. Your nature, thermometer like, rises and falls and sometimes you grow terribly low-spirited.” * His employer’s name was F. Van Benthuysen. Bikl4 op. cit., 24—25. 31 was at this time “without one spark of loyalty to the United States government”.* In the autumn of 1865 he found a better paid situation with a business firm in Kosciusko, Mississippi. “I make $ 50.00 per month & the total of my expenses will not exceed $ 15.00 per month,” he writes to his mother on October 26 from that place.■» At that time there gathered in Kusciusko the Synod of Mississippi, and this was a pleasant fact to the religious- minded young man, for thus he got the opportunity of listen­ ing to “a splendid sermon quite frequently”. He is devoting his spare time to drawing and to study, he tells her in the same letter, but he regrets his progress is slow. Both during the war and at this time he seems to have had a normal young man’s interest in the opposite sex. This is an important fact; otherwise how could he have given us, in his books, such wonderful pictures of young women in love? He had his mother, his sisters and later his wife, it is true, but without the knowledge of a fairly large number of young women it seems hardly possible that he could have gained such insight into women’s psychology as he did. During the war he carried on a lively correspondence with Bettie W . Coleman, whom, according to her own words,® he had impressed with a high estimation of his character. Towards the end of the war he seems to have fallen in love with a girl, about whom he evidently wrote to one Eleanor W. Curtiss; for she writes in a letter to him, dated April 4, 1865: “I congratulate you upon your conquest, but you must not lose your heart in Winston or elsewhere for the present and if you have already done so must manage somehow to find it, for I have long ago chosen for you a little friend of mine.” And during his sojourn in Kosciusko he watched the girls with interest. “You ought to see the way the young ladies are beginning to dress here,” he writes to his mother.« “Calico is at a tremendous discount and the ‘demoiselles’ appear before the astounded store-keepers in dresses imported

’ “My P olitics”. ‘ Bikld, op. cit., 26. ‘ In a letter to Cable, dated October 16, 1863. ‘ On October 26, 1865. 32

direct.” Back in New Orleans in December he received a letter from one M. A. Clark of Kosciusko who wrote: “Well George, I am sorry to inform you, that there is a charge of theft alleged against you *** made by a young lady who says you have stolen her most precious ornament — (vz) her Heart." ~ But Cable seems to have forgotten this Kosciusko girl for the young ladies of New Orleans, for on February 4, 1866, a former comrade in arms, W. A. Everman, wrote the following to him in a letter from Quincy, Illinois: “I am glad you are getting along so well and having such a nice time with the young ladies. I say God bless the ladies of N. O’ls! I believe they have no superiors in the world.” And shortly after that Cable evidently fell in love w'ith one of those unequalled New Orleans girls, for Everman writes on March 20 of the same year: “My good friend I wish you success both in this [his profession] and in your love affairs for I see too plainly that you are in love. *** Well give niy regards to your sweet-heart and tell her she can’t do better than take my old mess-mate.” And in the following year® Everman writes: “Many thanks for your advice in reference to Arabella Jane. I will try and profit by it. Do you practice what you preach? Perhaps that’s why you are single. I know you used to have two sweethearts to my one. How is if now?” By December, 1865, Cable was once more back in New Orleans, having obtained a position with a cotton-factor, Cole­ man, an old friend of the Cable family. Caring little about his delicate health, he threw himself with characteristic energy into his new work. “I find the only way for me to write you, is to snatch a few minutes from business and scribble in a way that is shameful,” he writes to his mother on December 29, 1865. “Mr. Coleman would keep me from work as much as his big heart will let him but I am anxious to learn what I can of business and so manage to keep busy, all the time.” He is happy to be in New Orleans, he tells her, but “oh what hap­ piness it would be to have you near me”. It may be added here that his mother had not returned to New Orleans after the war but was living at Madison, Mississippi. This was a

’ The letter is dated December 30, 1865. * On September 23, 1867. 33 constant source of regret to her son, and his devotion to her is apparent in every one of his frequent letters to her. On January 3, 1866, he writes: ‘ Oh how I wish myself a happy New Year for that means that I shall have the delightful pleasure of seeing my dear mother enjoying the comforts and pleasure of Home.” And one week later; “After a time when salaries rise and rents fall we will have a little home of our own in New Orleans La Belle & one hearth, one circle, one interest, one motive, one faith, one love — shall bind us all together.” » However, in spite of his hard work and his interest in young ladies. Cable found time for reading. “Study was always my natural impulse,” he writes in “My Politics”. And in a letter to his mother:® “Poor fellow [his brother], if his eyes would allow it he would sit with me and read every evening.” But what did Cable read? Was he completely innocent of novel- reading? It seems improbable. In his obviously autobiographi­ cal novel The Cavalier he writes;^° But my unsoldierly motive for going to head-quarters kept my misgivings alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be •where Shakespeare was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticised, and “Les Miserables” — Madame Le Vert’s Mobile trans­ lation — lent round; and where men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currj combs.

And in a letter of his \o his mother there is an indication of his having read Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. Under date of October 26, 1865, he writes: “I heard from Miss Curtiss some days ago, and such a scolding as I got! all because I thought that she thought that I had read her brother’s letter. She was alarmingly in earnest but forgives me. Would that I had remembered the elder Weller’s advice, ‘Samuel, bevare o’ the vimmins!’ ” Anyhow, his studiousness during the spring of 1866 was such as to make his brother worry about its consequences; for the latter writes in a letter of March 10, 1866: “Oh George, I greatly fear that you will ruin yourself by too close applica-

• Bikl^, op. cit., 30. '• 2— 3. 34 tion. What gain will it be to you if you do become a good scholar *** and have a broken constitution.” As Cable lived in a city where at that time politics coloured every activity, it is not surprising that we find in hiiii a lively political interest. He seems to have written about his political views to his sister Mary Louise, for she writes to him on May 3, 1866: “I am much obliged for your little chat on politics for, though I do not contemplate either arguments or essays on the subject I am much interested therein.” His indifference to newspaper-reading had vanished. Even during the war he often read northern as well as southern news­ papers, which proved a stimulating activity: “One of the first things I learned without being taught was the proneness of public sentiment to be wrong as to the facts, or the principles, involved in any case.” ^ He began to devote a good deal of thought to the question of the right of secession. The papers said that this question had been negatived by the arbitrament of the sword. But he said to himself, “The power to secede or prevent secession is all that the ‘arbitrament of the sword’ can decide. The sword can never make right wrong of wrong right.” ^ But if men could so lightly part with a conviction of right or rights, he had reason to ask himself, “Was there’ ever a right of secession at all?” He believed there was, but he began to study the question. He borrowed Story’s On the Constitution, and reading it, he weighed every sentence, every word, every implication. I He rose from his study indignant against the propagators of the doctrine of the right to secede. “What use or need had there been to set up such a doctrine and waste three hundred thousand young men’s lives in its defence?” he asked himself. He found only one answer: It must have been to protect slave- holding. The war had been a rebellion, but if only slaveholding was right, it must be considered a righteous rebellion. And so he turned to the study of this problem. Books being beyond reach, he could only ponder the matter. He had believed in the divine right to hold slaves which was supported in the Bible by the case of Onesimus. But one day a Scotch magazine happened to fall into his hands, and in 35 it he saw the epistle to Philemon mentioned. He studied it. The Onesimus argument went to pieces, and so did his belief in slavery. But this was theory. In life he saw the Negroes as unclean, stupid, ugly. “If the much feared ‘war of races’ should come,” he writes,s “I was going to be in the ranks of the white race fighting for the subjugation of the blacks.” This was his instinctive feeling as a white Southerner, but his sound common sense told him that the Negroes were being unfairly treated.s Thus we see how early his opinions on the Negro question were being formed, the opinions which almost two decades later he was to utter so boldly, thereby stirring southern feeling against him to an almost unbelievable extent. His opinions at that time appear the more remarkable when we consider the political situation, with “carpetbaggers”, sup­ ported by Negro votes, in power. In January, 1866, Cable was offered a more favourable situation in a small town in Mississippi — “no work at night” — but his heart was set on his native Crescent City and he could not find it in himself to leave.^i About the same time he seems to have decided to give up trade for engineering. “I was not aware you hade chosen a profession,” writes his friend Everman on March 20, 1866. “May I ask you what it is?” And in his letters to his mother he speaks about taking a job in Texas as an engineer.^^ xhis plan came to nothing, but in July of that year he joined a surveying expedition to the Atcha- falaya river. His letters to his mother from this expedition are interesting in several respects. The first letter reveals a requisite for a successful author: interest in people and their ways.i* I suppose all steamboat trips are the same so long as we keep in the Mississippi, so I will not describe the journey, though were I talking with you I could amuse you with a half-dozen droll anecdotes of the strangers I saw: — the cross old man who wouldn’t look at the bill of fare & became offended because he was so plentifully helped to dessert — the man who could not cut his steak & would not have another piece — the man who was “ A letter to his mother, dated January 31, 1866. » B ikli, op. cit., 32. “ The letter is dated July 9, 1866. Ibid., 33. 36 always a course ahead of the rest & always ate his soup before the gong screamed — the fellow that wouldn’t go to bed if he knew himself & the fellow that wouldn’t get up if he knew himself — & finally the plain lady who would stay on the boiler deck & the pretty one who would stay in her room, all these I would tell of but judging by myself you are too warm to laugh much.

He was impressed with the sight of the two great rivers, “mingling their waters without a ripple like two great giants silenty clasping hands”. And the soft washing of their waters at night he thought like “the breathing of some monster asleep”. Put suddenly he seems to have become aware of the fact that he had been carried away by his romantic contempla­ tion of the scenery, for he writes, “But excuse the romantic — there must me Irish in our blood”. From a letter of two days later we learn something about his new life in the insect-swarming delta lands. Dear Mother: In a perfect hail of crickets that are trying to break the lantern I will try to pen a few lines before going to a sound sleep; of the letter I am very uncertain — of the sleep not in the least so. My second days work is just ended and I begin to feci at ease shouting like a ship captain in a hurricane from sunrise to dusk. I desire very much to write to my friends at home, especially to the Colemans — please say so — but I cannot hope to for sometime — nearly a week. I have no trouble from cough now, and the sun annoyed me only the first day; I bear all the good and bad luck as it comes and find engineering about like everything else bard for those who hate work and interesting for those only whose tastes are pleased in it. I write a line or two and then, laying the left cheek upon the table, blow the bugs off my paper and make another start; while everyone who is unoccupied alternately rush here and there and seek refuge under his musquito bar. * * *

On July 15 he writes to his mother from the “East Bank Bayou Atchafalaya”, telling her that he has gained much strength and is bearing the little inconveniences of camp life very comfortably. From this letter we learn also, for the first time, of Cable’s strict sabbatarianism. “Yesterday”, he writes, “the ‘Leveller’ to whom I am ‘Rodsman’ was given a task to do before night or to finish Sunday morning; and though he is, thro’ negligence, at work this morning the chief has given him a new Rodsman on account of my scruples.” The 37 following Sunday, however, he was not so lucky. “The most unpleasant thing that has happened since leaving home,” he writes on July 22, “was my being obliged to work from break­ fast to dinner today — Sunday. It was an absolute necessity — but caused by the laziness & drunkenness of the leveller with whom I work.” He finds engineering hard work — “but”, he writes, “I inherit enough of ‘Mrs. Cable’ to like the labour — it is in fact what I thought it — a beautiful profession that few men are willing to sacrifice their comfort for.” But he himself is ready to sacrifice his comfort for it, -for he feels that he hais actually chosen his lifetime profession.i* His optimistic plans were, however, not to be realized, for an attack of malaria cut short his career as a surveyor. He spent some months of convalescence in the surveying camp, studying the natural history of the surrounding country. It took years for him to get rid of the effects of the fever, and so he had to give up engineering and return to the less strenuous office work.i® The following years were, in spite of his illness, full of stimulating intellectual activity. He joined a literary and debating society,is where he met several intelligent young men who were later to be prominent in different walks of life. For a time at least, they met in the basement of a Metho­ dist Church in Felicity Road,i^ and here Cable vented his newly acquired opinions.on the Negro question — certainly another proof of his courage. At that time there began to be much talk, in newspapers and elsewhere, about the black peasantry, and Cable spoke “with abhorrence against this un-American, undemocratic and tawdry delusion”.^ A source of much inspiration to Cable, in his views on politics, was Bancroft’s History of the United States, which he studied for a long time every evening together with two

Ibid., 35. Ibid., 36. Called “The New Orleans Literary and Debating Society”, according to a letter to Cable from John T. Sawyer, headed Trenton, Louisiana, March 6, 1883. •' A letter to Cable from Wm J. Smith, headed Houston, Texas, October 25, 1884. See footnote 20. 38 of his friends, Harrison Parker, later editor of the Picayune, and Henry G. Hester, later superintendent of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. Cable tells us 3 that he absorbed many good political ethics from this study and that he was growing ashamed of his political attitude. The question that most of all troubled him was his acceptance of the protection and benefits of the United States government to which he gave no allegiance.!® These years, the last of the 1860’s, also witnessed his first stumbling steps as an author though, at first, he contented him self Vfith his debating-society friends for a forum.*® Soon, however, his desire to be regretted when he died drove

Literature, and not politics, was to be Cable’s main occapation, but as it is certain that his political interest played a great part in launching him on the l i t e r a r y career and later inspired, to a greater or less degree, all his works before The Cavalier (1901), it is important to follow the development of his political opinions. ’• He may, of course, have contributed to the school journal whose editor he was; but this can probably not be ascertained as no copies of it are likely to be in existence. The following extract from a letter to Cable from Wm J. Smith, headed Houston, Texas, October 25, 1884, gives some interesting infor­ mation about his activities in those years. I can easily refresh your memory regarding our some­ time intimacy. Yon can doubtless recall in the year '69 or '70 a literary society (extremely “fresh” if the other members were as green as I) that met in the basement of a Methodist Church on the Felicity Road. Introduced by Willie Walker I was a member of that society, where I had the pleasure of hearing yon recite an original poem entitled (I think) “Annie Lee”. I had the honor of dining with you one Sunday about this time — on which occasion you inveighed against the wickedness of cooking on Sunday, but (we were late) you remarked to your mother. There was no virtue in eating cold food which had been prepared on Sunday. After dinner we read Tennyson ***. Yon were then the leader of the Prytania St Presbyterian Church choir, of which I was for a short time a member. I remember you could rarely sing, because of some throat affection, for which Dr Brickell (was he, or Dr Mercer the original of Dr Sevier) was treating by inhalation of iodine vapor — “ In a letter to his mother he wrote: “The cotton business is very pleasant — but I cannot help striking higher, & trying for an honourable profession. May the world regret me when I die I” Bikl^ op. eit., 31. 39 him to seek a wider public for his literary productions, and on Sunday, February 27, 1870, his first column headed “Drop Shot” appeared in the New Orleans Picayune.^- This was certainly an important day in Cable’s life but not so important as December 7 of the preceding year, for on that day he had been married to his fiancee of ten months’ standing, Louise Stewart Bartlett. His wife was of New England ancestry, her father, the son of a clergyman, having left his native Con­ necticut for New Orleans in the late 1830’s.^* Cable became a regular contributor to the Picayune, his “Drop Shot” causeries appearing every Sunday, with only seven exceptions, up till July 9, 1871. From February 21 to March 19, 1871, the column was a daily feature, and there were also a few “posthumous” appearances of “Drop Shot”.24 Though his writings were published anonymously. Cable was known to the editors of the newspaper; and as he states himself 25 that by these newspaper contribu­ tions he made “a considerable local literary reputation”, we may assume that the readers of the Picayune also knew who wrote the “Drop Shot” column. When, on the strength of his stylistic skill, he was offered a regular job as a reporter on the staff of the paper, he accepted, evidently once more considering himself launched on his lifetime career.^® But before leaving his office desk, he stipulated not to do certain kinds of reporting, and this did not please “the old man”, the proprietor of the paper.^T One of the things he

” Arlin Turner, “George Washington Cable’s Literary Apprenticeship”, Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXIV, January, 1941. Where no other source is given, my account of Cable’s writings for the Picayune is based on this article. “ A letter to Cable from I. N. Tarbox, headed West Newton, Massa­ chusetts, March 15, 1883. “ On August 20, 1871, and F ebruary 11, 18, 25, 1872. “ In a letter to Messrs. L. C. Page & Co., dated November 19, 1901. ** I have found no indication of the exact time of the beginning of his employment as a reporter, but there is reporting from his hand in February, 1871, issues of the Picayune. Since the “Drop Shot” column became a daily feature from February 21, 1871, it seems probable that he started his work as a regular reporter in February, 1871. •’ Cable’s own words in an interview in the Picayune, as quoted by the Critic, VII, 130— 131, March 12, 1887. 40 did not want to write was theatrical notices, as attending theatres was condemned^by the strict rules of the Presbyterian church.28 Evidently he was considered a very promising talent, for at first allowances were made for his religious scruples; and in spite of his inexperience, he was given some important assignments, such as reporting the Carnival festi­ vities and the meetings of the “Teachers’ Institute”. The latter task was one that made him advance another step in his views on the Negro question. The “Teachers’ Institute” was a conference of teachers called together by the Super­ intendent of Schools. Attendance was compulsory and white and black teachers had to sit together in one room, on terms of equality. Cable reported this fact in resentful terms, and the other papers of the city “joined thie hue and cry”. But suddenly Cable began to see that there were two sides to the question and “much doubted which side was least right”. He ceased writing on the matter, thus permanently losing grace with the proprietor of the p ap er* 3 Shortly afterwards he was sent by the paper to the public schools. There he saw white ladies teaching Negro boys, children of both races sitting side by side, and the Negro children following the instruction as intelligently as did the white. Then he began to realize that the day would come when the Negro must “share and enjoy in common with the white race the whole scale of public rights and advantages provided under American government”. And sjo the convictions grew upon him that public society had to be reconstructed upon this basis and that those who tried tc> prevent or retard this development were the South’s worst enemies.* It was the Democratic party, he found, that was bent on preserving the ancient order, the rulejby race and class; and the radicals did not want black rule but equality of races. The fact that the Picayune was a Democratic paper made his position difficult, and he also began to find out that news­ paper work was not quite what he had hoped it would be.3 He wanted to be always writing, and his employers wanted him to be always reporting. And so when summer approached

“ George Waring, op. cit. 41 and the paper had to cut expenses, it was intimated that his resignation would be accepted. He took the hint, and returning to book-keeping once more, he vowed that he would never have anything to do with a newspaper again.^^ As a reporter he was a failure.*® His vow, however, had been too hasty. For though he never did any more reporting work, it was not long before he began anew to write articles and sketches for the Picayune.^° In the issue of July 14, 1 872, he reviewed George H. Calvert’s Goethe: His Life and Works, and in August s* he wrote two articles attacking the Louisiana State Lottery Company. This come­ back was, as Cable tells us himself in “My Politics”, occasio­ ned by the fact that the Picayune changed hands. The new editor proposed that Cable should write some sketches of the churches and charities of New Orleans. The better to qualify for this task he began to study the history of Louisiana, in which he became deeply interested, as he tells us in “My Politics”. He was at that time employed in the cotton house of Wm. C. Black & Co. His employer, soon realizing the skill of his young book-keeper, offered him to take entire charge of the office at a certain salary a year and to hire what assistants he wanted. This suited Cable well, for he got more time to devote to his literary work. He employed a cashier, and thus he could occupy himself with his private concerns, only being consulted by the cashier on important matters. After a time he grew tired of writing trifles for the Picayune and resolved to use the historical material he had found for some short stories.27 In an article entitled “Cable and the Creoles” 32 Edward L. Tinker writes the following about Cable: “He approached

In a letter to Messrs. L. C. Page, dated November 19, 1901, he writes: “I did not leave the ‘Picayune’ at the height of my success, as a reporter I never had any success, and the ‘Picayune’ dropped me because I was a failure.” ” For a time in 1873 be was also New Orleans correspondent of the Louisville Courier-Jcarnal. See letters to Cable from B. Smith, headed Louisville, July 9 and 23, 1873. •* August 11 and 25, 1872. ” American Literature, V, 313—326, Jan u ary , 1934. 42 the task of telling his tales with a mind that was tabula rasa as far as the influence of other fiction writers was concerned, for he considered the reading of novels sinful — an opinion he did not change until, in middle age, he chanced to read George Macdonald’s Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood, and was persuaded that some fiction might be innocuous.” Now it is very strange to find a man setting out to write short stories without ever having read any fiction at all and with a con­ viction of its sinfulness. It would not be surprising to find in a man of Cable’s strict Presbyterian principles such a conviction, it is true, but would such i a man devote his time to creating him self what he thought^ sinful? This certainly makes one wonder whether Tinker’s j statement can be true. It has already been demonstrated in this work that Cable was not completely innocent of fiction-reading. At nine years of age he had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin (see p. 16), and it seems very probable that by 1865 he had read Dickens’s Pickwick Papers (see p. 33). In his diary he writes the following about himself at the age of thirteen; “I took great interest in books and absolutely none iti newspapers.” Though we know that his principal interest was history, it does not seem unlikely that some of the booksi were fiction. Further­ more, did he not have to read some fiction at high, school? It also seems improbable that a young man who considered literature sinful should become editor of a school review (see pp. 17—18) and join a literary society (see p. 37). There is finally his mention of reading a Scotch magazine (see p. 34) and the evidence presented by a passage in The Cavalier (quoted on p. 33). But all this is unimportant in coilnparison with Cable’s contributions to the Picayune, for in |them we see, as Arlin Turner puts it, evidence of his rapidly ^dening acquaintance among books. The “Drop Shot” column appeared eighty-eight times, and the average length of the contributions was a little above one column. Half or more of this space was devoted to literary discussion. The names of over fifty authors were mentioned. Bacon, Milton, Shakespear^, Byron, Scott, Tenny­ son, Hawthorne, Poe, and Longfellow nliore than once. Quota- ” E ntry for December 22, 1888. 43 tions from earlier and contemporary poets were freely in­ serted in the column. Criticism of poets was more frequent than that of prose writers, but it is evident that Cable was, at that time, by no means unfamiliar with the latter. One may, for instance, read Cable’s discussion of Josh Billings and Mark Twain,®* from which it may be worth while to give an extract:

* * * If you would laugh at Mark you must first hear him through; but good old Josh is fun from first to last, and was born with the art of being wise and silly in a breath. Mark moves always with the laughing point of view as a goal, but Josh carries a thousand laughs with him, loaded like a Santa Claus. It may be that the superior weight of mind is Mark Twain’s, for his descriptions of Oriental scenery that are without humor are productions of rare beauty, and some of his humorous inventions show a power of satire that will compare favorably with writers of higher fame. They make a mistake to call his Frog story his masterpiece, and fail to apprehend the true genius of the man. We recall nothing that so plainly shows at the best what Mark Twain is as the “Beef Contract.” There is there an actual tangible something to make war against, and the sword of sarcasm flashes like fire as it falls upon the trickeries of the Government. He is too practical to be a Quixote, and only Josh Billings can be a Sancho Panza. In point of moral tone, “sly old J. B.” is certainly in advance, for while all that can be said of Mark Twain is that he writes little that has harm in it, his fellow joker is as full of goodness as a bunch of berries. *** If we had to part with one of them, it would not be easy to choose. As for us give us Josh Billings. Mark spins a good yarn, but Josh is such as blessed old fool.

As Arlin Turner has pointed out, Cable’s preference for Josh Billing is not surprising as, in judging literature. Cable always considered its moral tone as a particular merit. In view of the fact that his early short stories belong to the local-colour group, it is very interesting to find that Cable had read Bret Harte’s The Luck of Roaring Camp, whicli was the object of a favourable discussion in the "Drop Shot” column.3® It was, he found, a masterly narrative with an effec-

” Picayune, Ju ly 17; 1870. « Ibid., F ebruary 26, 1871. 44 tive didactic import. In his farewell column Cable praised Taine, Scott, Tennyson, Milton, Emerson, and Malory, and, what is still more significant, he defended novel-reading on the ground that novels often teach morals. By all this it has been proved, beyond doubt, I think, that, when Cable approached the task of telling his short stories, his mind was not “tabula rasa as far as the influence of other fiction writers was concerned”.®^ Neither did he consider the reading of novels sinful.

« Ibid., Ju ly 9, 1871. *’ In fact, as Arlin Turner has pointed lOUt, Cable imitated Josh Billings's style in several of his contributions to the Picayune. And one of his poetic contributions to that paper (reprinted by BikU, op. cit., 168—169) is an obvious imitation of Tennyson. CHAPTER V

OLD CREOLE DAYS. THE GRANDIS- SIMES, MADAME DELPHINE

Political conditions in New Orleans rapidly deteriorated during the early 1870’s. The property of the city disappeared, expenditures were extravagant, and the bonded indebtedness increased. At elections, fights were frequent and often fatal. Voting became a dangerous affair. Gambling houses operated openly without interference from the police, and the streets were unsafe at night. In the summer of 1874, the Crescent White League was organized by New Orleans citizens with the object of expelling the “carpet-bag” government and restoring white supremacy. In September of that year, Canal Street was the scene of a violent clash between White League members and the Metro­ politan Police. The police were worsted, but the victory was only temporary and it was not until April, 1877, that the “carpet-bag” administration was definitely ousted.^ During those turbulent years Cable held political opinions which were not those of the majority of white Southerners. He had attempted to vent his views on the Negro problem in his contributions to the Picayune, but this had earned him the disfavour of his employer and probably contributed to his losing his job as a reporter. As political tensions in the city grew, it became increasingly difficult for him to discuss his opinions with even his most intimate friends. Feeling intensely the unrighteousness of the whites’ earlier and present treat­ ment of the coloured population, it became an unbearable burden to him not to be able openly to speak up. In this situa-

flew Orleans City Guide, 33—34. 46 tion he found a new outlet for his pent-up feelings. He wrote short stories, putting into them his criticism of social condi­ tions in his native city. “I found a certain satisfaction in writing that public avowal of my views which I found it so painful publicly to speak,” he writes in his diary 2 in connec­ tion with his first short stories. This was, however, not his only incentive. His inborn impulse to write was a strong one. Even as a boy he is said to have been determined to write a book, at high school he wrote good essays and became the editor of a school review, and in the late 1860’s he wrote poems which he declaimed before his friends in a literary society. In 1870 he began to contribute to the Picayune; later as a reporter, he wanted always to write creative work and disliked gathering the daily news. And in his diary 3 he says: “But why should I have felt constrained to write. I answer, that writing had been from my very childhood an istinct, at least my strongest bent.” He also had a strong desire to attain to fame, to be regretted when he died, as he put it himself.* Becoming an author was a way to satisfy this desire, and so it is not surprising to find that he was not content with his local reputation but tried as early as 1871 to get his contributions to the Picayune published in book-form. In a letter to his mother, dated November 20, 1871,® he writes: “I have heard nothing final from my publishers yet, and cannot resist much anxiety.” One month earlier he had written to Scribner, Armstrong & Co., Appleton & Co., and James R. Osgood & Co., proposing a ma­ nuscript of his for publication. The two latter firms declined the offer point blank, while Scribner’s Vrere willing to inspect

‘ U nder Jan u ary 10, 1889. * Under January 22, 1889. * In a letter to his mother, dated January 26, 1866. BikU, op. cit., 31. And Boyesen writes to Cable under date of July 20, 1878: “*** you seem to imagine that you are my debtor, while such is not the case, at the very threshold of your career you convinced me that you had a great fu tu re before you, if you chose to grasp it. I believe so yet, especially since your telling me that ‘ambition is the lilack sheep in your flock.’ I like that phrase immensely; no man of letters ever accomplished anything without it.” * Bikle, op. cit., 42. 47 the manuscript.6 Cable sent his manuscript to them, and from their rejection letter’ we see what it contained. They write: “It is altogether too fragmentary & our experience is that books made up of these isolated contributions to newspapers are invariably failures financially.” It seems to have been about this time that he became engrossed in the history of Louisiana. He does not give the exact time of the beginning of those historical studies in “My Politics”, where he writes: “The Picayune changed hands but became more a ,‘Democratic’ organ than ever. I was invited to write some historical sketches for it of the principal churches and charities of the city. * * * My counting-room work was not so engrossing but I could accept this invitation, and the better to qualify I began to study the colonial history of Louisiana. I became deeply interested; wrote the sketches, and stillNstudied on. I was moved at last to write some short stories of old New Orleans.” However, in a letter to his mother, dated August 20, 1872,8 he writes: “I have read a great deal since last May; I had to be posted in State & City history. My papers have somehow taken a form which must make a book if they are fit to make anything.” And on July 4 of the same year he wrote to her: “At 3 o’clock I shall go to dinner, dining at 4; at 5 Ross will appear and we shall sit down in my cool bow-window, and he will read the History of Louisiana aloud. Tomorrow I review Fanny Fern’s last book, and Ro^s & I finish the 2d vol. of the Hist, of La.” ® From the first of these letters it would appear that he had started his studies of local history in May, 1872, but there is evidence that he had at least touched upon the subject before; for on February 25, 1872, he writes in the Picyaune under the heading “Material for Poems”: Louisiana’s brief two centuries of history is a rich and profitable mine. Here lie the gems, like those new diamonds in Africa, right on top of the ground. The mines are virgin. Choctaw legends and

• The letters from the two New York firms are dated October 23, 1871. The letter from James R. Osgood & Co. is dated Boston, November 10, 1871. ’ Dated Jan u ary 8, 1872. » BikU, op. cit., 44. • Ibid., 43. 48

Spanish adventures may be found overlying each other in profuse abundance. Only one man, if I know aright, has culled among these nuggets.*" The historian of Louisiana — like that Indian hunter of Potosi who, in chasing after the living things of the ground’s surface, unearthed its silver with the upturning of a sapling — in following the annals of colonization, has uncovered the mines of romance. But the half, I am sure, has not been told; and I have sent Felix down — had to — couldn’t find any com­ missioned poet to offer the business to — to see what he can gather up without digging, just in his two hands, so.**^

The title of this essay is significant, for it is evident that at the time Cable had no plans for using Louisiana history as material for short stories. All his earlier contributions to the Picayune show that he regarded himself principally as a poet, and therefore it was natural that he should look upon the romantic history of Louisiana as “material for poems”. It was probably in the summer of 1872 that Cable realized the possibilities of using episodes from New Orleans history as material for short stories and was “moved at last to write some short stories of old New Orleans”. In May of that year he seems to have received the invitation to write historical sketches of New Orleans for the Picayune that launched him on a serious study of local history. And from July onwards he had plenty of time to devote to this study; for he tells his mother on July 4: “Today finishes my labors of the counting- room upon the closing season, & I shall have considerable leisure for literary work until the cotton crop is made.” In “My Politics” he relates how, after receiving the invitation mentioned above, he went to the ciiy archives and read hundreds of old newspapers. “Here I got my inspiration for Tite Poulette, written in sympathy for the fate of the quad­ roon caste. And here, too, I conceived the story of Posson Jone’.” ! Under these circumstances it may be considered fairly certain that none of the stories collected later in Old Creole Days were written before May, 1782. This assumption is borne

'• Evidently a reference to Charles Gayarre. “ Quoted from Arlin Turner, “George Washington Cable’s Literary Apprenticeship”, Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXIV, Jan u ary , 1941. 49

out by a letter from Cable to F. L. Pattee in which he speaks of just having written the stories he showed Edward King, the reporter of Scribner’s Monthly, on his \isit to New Orleans in the autumn (?) of 1872. Scribner’s Monthly, the magazine that was to play such an important part in introducing Cable and other Southern writers to the reading public of America, had been founded in New York in 1870. It was conducted by Josiah G. Holland, a man whose aim was to establish a “new' union between religion, art, and literature”,^® Roswell Smith, and Richard Watson Gilder. One of the ambitions of this magazine was to bridge over the discord of feeling within the American nation resulting from the Civil War. A way to achieve this pre­ sumably was to present the little known Southern states to Northern readers. Another ambition of the editors was to perfect the art of illustration, and descriptive articles on the picturesque South would be well suited for extensive illustra­ tion. Accordingly, with J. Wells Champney as an illustrator, Edward King was sent South to collect material for a series of articles.During their stay in New Orleans they met Cable, who was certainly at that time on the lookout for an oppor­ tunity to contact a Northern magazine.In his letter to F. L. Pattee mentioned above Cable describes what happened Edward King came to New Orleans almost at the beginning of his tour of the South and >ve became acquaintances and friends. I asked him where to send some stories — two or three — which I had just written and he himself read and sent two to Dr. Holland, editor of Scribner’s Monthly. Then Gilder, assistant editor, wrote me, and my lifetime acquaintance with both the Century and Charles Scribner’s Sons began. After Edward King had left New Orleans he wrote Cable

■' Dated Jn ly 21, 1914. BikW, op. cit. 47—48. “ Qable, “A Word About Dr. Holland”, Christian Union, Ju ly 25, 1889. “ Frank Tooker, The Joys and Tribulations of an Editor. W illiam Ellsworth, A Golden Age of Authors. “ After his unsuccessful attempt to have a book made out of his writings for the Picayune, he had tried to have a poem of his published by Appleton’s Journal. See a letter from Marion Baker to Cable, dated July 7, 1872. *• Bikle, op. cit., 47— 48. 50 many letters which show his efforts to place Cable’s stories in Scribner’s Monthly and other magazines. As far as can be judged from these letters, at first King sent only one story, “Bibi”, to Josiah G. Holland. “Bibi” x^as a story prompted by the indignation Cable felt after rekding the Black Code. It was never published as a short stpry but was later made the foundation of the Bras-Coupe episode in The Grandis-

On March 25, 1873, Edward Kin^ wrote to Cable from Mobile, Alabama: “ ‘Bibi’ has waltzed' away to New York *** Fear not, O Cable, for your fame is,sure if you continue to make Bibis.” He seems to have beeA worried about Cable's overexerting himself, for he exhorted him not to toil by the midnight lamp too much.i® And in a later letter he writes: “I am sure of you — I know where yo ur place is; and you will come to do it. Keep those nervous h ands of yours off from paper. Don’t work too hard. Be re ady to come into your heritage with a ready strength.” A further story is mentioned in King’s letters to Cable only on April 24; on that date King writes from San Antonio, Texas ;2o “Do not fail to send ‘’Sieurj George’ to the Cushing address, as I shall delight in readihg it to certain of the faithful.” I By this time Cable had begun to exj)erience the usual agony of authors waiting for the editors’! decision. He evidently vented his anxiety in his correspondence with King, for on May 9, 1873, the latter wrote from Houston: “*** thirty or sixty days isn’t long to wait for an editor’s decision. Bless you my dear friend, if they don’t jprint it, some one else will. *** Seriously, I think Bibi has a chance. But I am only a worm crawling before the Scribnerian throne. Still, I plead poor wounded Bibi’s cause.” And a few days later he promised that he would “discuss Bibi and other things more fully with! the management” when

" “My Politics” . *• Bikle, op. cif., 46. Headed H ouston, May 9, 1873. “ Bikle, op. cit., 46. 51 visiting New York in June.^i However, he never got the chance of doing anything more for “Bihi”, for, on May 19 of that year, the following short but expressive communication was written to Cable by Robert Underwood Johnson, one of the editors of Scribner’s Monthly: “We regret very much that we can not avail ourselves of your MS. entitled ‘Bibi’.” Towards the end of June, 1873, Scribner’s, on Cable’s request, forwarded “Bibi” to Appleton’s J o u r n a l,but it had no success with this magazine either. In January,, 1874, it was once more sent to Scribner’s ■— Cable had obviously set his heart on having this terrible accusation of the slaveholders published — but with the same result as before. Richard Watson Gilder wrote to Cabler^a “Bibi is a splendid fellow; but I fear the story you make of him is not so good as your other stories.” The story was later sent to the Atlantic Monthly whose editor declined it “on account of the unmitigatedly distressful effect of the story”.^^ “’Sieur George”, however, was more successful. It was accepted by Scribner’s Monthly, and Edward King certainly could book some of the credit for this. On July 22, 1873, he writes to Cable “The battle is won. ‘Monsieur George’ is accepted, and will be published in Scribner. It will appear in the magazine as "Sieur George — A New Orleans Story’ —. I read the story myself to the editor, who liked it; it trembled in the balance a day, arid then Oh ye gods! was accepted!” The story was printed in the October number of the magaz­ ine, but before that Gilder had written a very encouraging letter to Cable.26 “After reading your story in the proof — ’Sieur Creorge,” he wrote, “*** I feel moved to say that ‘we’ hope you know that you have the makings of one of the best story- writers of the day. All you want to do is to appreciate your-

“ This letter is undated but it was sent from St. Louis, and another letter shows that he visited that city in the middle of May, 1873. He also visited St. Louis towards the end of July, 1873, but there is no doubt that the undated letter was written during the former visit. ” A letter from R. U. Johnson to Cable, dated June 27, 1873. “ On Ja n u ary 23, 1875. “ A le tte r to Cable from G. P. L athrop, dated December 16, 1875. « Bikld, op. cit., 46—47. «• Ibid., 49. 52 self.” And he went on to give Cable good advice — be always clear, make every sentence as sharp as may be — because he wanted him to fulfil the promise that there was in that story. During the spring and summer of 1873 Cable was at work on another story, “Dr. Goldenbow”,^^ later submitted to Edward King who pronounced it not quite jup to the level of Cable’s other work.28 Such was the opinion of the magazine editors, too, for it was rejected. The same fate was shared by two more of Cable’s early short stories, “Hortensia” and “Ba’m o’ Gilly”.29 Two of these rejected stories were destroyed by Cable,3o and the third seems to have been lost. However, in addition to “’Sieur George”, six other of Cable’s stories from these years — 1872-1875 — were successful. Even before “’Sieur George” was accepted — and in spite of the rejection of “Bibi” by Scribner’s Monthly — he was plan­ ning a new story; for on July 13, 1873, Edward King wrote to him from New York: “I can see a gleam of success in the plan of your new story.” This was probably “Belles Demoiselles Plantation”, printed in Scribner’s Monthly for April, 1874; but it may have been “’Tite Poulette”, ready by the end of 1873 but not published until October, 1874. In connection with the first of these two stories Edward King wrote to Cable“I have just read Belles Demoiselles. So beautiful — so admirably conceived. So sweetly and quaintly told! I am now ready to admit with Gilder that you are a genius.” And on February 4, 1874, he wrote: “I have " In an undated letter evidently written in' May, 1873, (see footnote 21) King asked, “How progresses the Dr.?” and in a letter of August 9, 1873, “How goes Dr. Goldenbow?” In an undated letter which may be assigned to the time between February and October, 1874; for he writes ih the same letter, »’Tite Poulette’, as you know, will be out in Scribner in October.* This story was accepted on February 5, 1874, (see a letter, of that date from Gilder to Cable) and printed in the October number of that year. The latter was received by Scribner’s on May 21, 1875. See a postcard of that date from R. U. Johnson to Cable. ” Cable’s diary, under January 22, 1889. Received by Scribner’s on December 3, 1873. See a letter of that date from R. U. Johnson to Cable. ” In a letter dated only 26th. 53 seen Mademoiselle Poulette. *** Persevere, and graduate to New York as soon as you can.” About a month and a half before the publication of “’Tite Poulette”, another story from Cable’s pen arrived in the editorial offices of Scribner’s Monthly. It'was“Posson Jone’”.33 This story did not find favour with Gilder but was rejected. Edward King tried to find an explanation for this rejection; he wrote to Cable “Gilder wants your very best. I expect he is therefore somewhat exacting. Probably he thinks you need spurring, but you don’t. But Gilder is your-firm friend. You can always count on him.” King made several attempts to place the story for Cable and was at last successful with Appleton’s Journal, where it appeared on April 1, 1876. In the meantime three more of Cable’s New Orleans stories had been judged acceptable by the stern critics at 654 Broad­ way, the location of the editorial offices of Scribner’s Monthly. Early in December, 1874, “Jean-ah Poquelin” was in the hands of Gilder, who writes to Cable on the 7th of that month: “I don’t care about Hortensia, but Jean-ah Poquelin is fine. It has one great defect — however — it strikes me. The surprise should be retained till the last.” It did not appear in the magazine until May of next year, and more than a month earlier “Madame Delicieuse” had arrived in New York. By March 31, 1875, Gilder had read it, for on that day he wrote to its author: You bother me. Your conception of character is strong — artistic — your style is bright and witty — your plots are generally good — your field is all your own — and I consider your stories a great acquisition to the monthly — but you lack in the capacity to edit yourself. This is the only thing that makes me fear for your literary future. The ‘Madame Deliceuse’ [sic] is a case in point. It is one of the best stories I ever read; and yet there are a lot of little awkwardnesses etc. that greatly mar the general effect.

This criticism was evidently prompted by his desire to get Cable to do his very best, and after some further correspond-

” Received on August 15, 1874. See a postcard of that date from R. U. Johnson to Cable. Here the story is called “Parson Jone”, which -was probably its original title. In an undated letter. 54 ence on the subject he was ready to admit that “Given the same subject there is not another man in the country could have done it so well — except, possibly, Bret Harte.” The last of this group of stories was “Cafe des Exiles”.*® It was finished in the autumn of 1875, arrived in New York on November 8 of that year, and appeared in Scribner’s Monthly for March, 1876. This story met with Gilder’s approval. He wrote “ ‘Exiles’ is very carefully written — I think it shows additional form of self-criticism. I think we shall be glad to print it if you will let us omit a touch or two of horror — and very little else.” Undoubtedly, the publication of his stories in magazine form had given great satisfaction to Cable, but his ambition was to see a book of his in print. So, in the autumn of 1875, he made a proposal to Scribner, Armstrong & Co. for a volume of his short stories, but “after due consideration” they declined it on the ground that they had no satisfactory experiences with collections of short stories.s* But Cable did not give up his hopes; he renewed his proposal with an offer to give a list of five hundred subscribers, only to get the same negative reply.®* “It was not until 1878, nearly or quite 3 years after [the com­ pletion of ‘Cafe des Exiles’ in the autumn of 1875], that I began again to write pages intended for magazine contribution, and it was then only in response to an unsolicited and un­ expected offer from the Ed’s of ‘Scribner’s Monthly’ to pay me a certain sum to write a serial novel to run through a year,” Cable writes in his diary.*® And in “My Politics” he tells us that after finishing the short stories, he just wrote a non-political article now and then for the Picayune. According to the diary, the novel. The Grandissimes, was

In a letter dated June 7, 1875. Under January 22, 1889, Cable writes in his diary: “I was about that time [the autumn of 1875] completing my ‘CaM des ExiUs’ tho it was not printed till Feb’y following, the last written of those stories that made up the original volume of ‘Old Creole Days’.” ” U nder date of.N ovem ber 18, 1875. ” Their letter is dated October 7, 1875. ’• Dated November 15, 1875. “ Under date of January 22, 1889. 55 begun only in response to an offer from Scribner’s Monthly, but in “My Politics” Cable gives another version. After stating that he had unexpectedly been invited by Scribner’s to furnish a serial novel, he writes: “I hired assistance at one of my office desks, and fell to work to write ‘The Grandis- simes.’ In fact, that novel was already partly written. The editors knew nothing of this ***.” Now it can be proved that the novel was begun much earlier than the diary indicates and also that, at an early stage, the editors of Scribner’s Monthly knew of Cable’s work on it. For, in a letter headed Ithaca, February 18, 1877, Hjalmar H. Boyesen offered Cable his help in preparing the way for his forthcoming novel. And on November 29 of the same year he wrote to Cable: “I talked with Dr. Holland about you this summer and he expressed the hope that you would send him your novel as soon as it is finished.” As a matter of fact, it seems that Cable himself had informed Gilder of his novel, for on April 2, 1877, Gilder wrote to him: “Well, you conceited young writer — who would think you can write a novel! How is the said novel coming on?” Now, it is probable that, on account of the failure of his plan to make a collection of his short stories and of his delicate health. Cable stopped writing for some time. But there is an indication that as early as the spring of 1876 he was planning his aovel. On April 21 of that year he wrote to Gilder “Will you let me trouble you for a postal card? Just write on the back what I can get French’s Collection of Louisiana Papers, and Poole’s Index to Periodicals for, from S. W . & Armstrong.” That was evidently the kind of books needed by a man gathering material for a novel like The Grandissimes. By March of 1877 the whole plan of the novel was worked

“ The latter of these errors of memory of Cable’s has been pointed ont by Bikl^ op. cit., 55, footnote. " Bikl6 (op. cit., 157) says that after the publication of the short stories nothing further was written for several years. In view of the facts presented this statement must be considered as incorrect. The last story to be printed, “Posson Jone’ ”, appeared in April, 1876, and Cable was at work on the novel by the spring of 1877. Furthermore, he wrote some articles for the Picagune in the meantime. •» BikU, op. cit., 54. 5 56

out, for on the 17th of that month Hjalmar H. Boyesen wrote to Cable The magnificence of the material for your novel quite dazzled me, & your little parenthetical remarks, sprinkled through the main narrative, convinced me that you see both your dangers & your exceptional advantages as clearly as any novelist I ever knew. I read with a glow of delight your brief sketch of your plot, & I saw immediately what your chances were. Yours is going to be the kind of novel which the Germans call a “Kultur roman,” a novel in which two struggling forces of opposing civilizations crystalize & in which they find their enduring monument. That is rather awkwardly expressed, but you know what I mean. Out of the material you display before me, I would undertake to make a dozen novels, all tolerably unhackneyed; but you can do the same & in the course of time will do it. I shall of course say nothing about your novel; only I like to talk about what you have done already.

There is also some internal evidence which tends to show that more than one-fourth of The Grandissimes was written before April 24, 1877, the date of the ousting of the carpet­ bag government in New Orleans. In his diary Cable writes “For The Grandissimes contained as plain a protest against the times in which it was written as against the earlier times in which its scenes were set.” Now there are many attacks in the book on the caste system of the South, but this gives us no clue as to the time of the composition; but there is one passage to which Cable attached much importance, for he intended to quote it in “My Politics” in order to show how plain a protest the novel was against the times in which it was composed.^8 On pp. 119—120 he makes Honore Grandissime say to Governor Claiborne: “Your principal danger — at least, I mean difficulty — is this: that the Louisianais themselves, some in pure lawlessness, some through loss of office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old condition of things, will not only hold off from all participa­ tion in your government, but will make all sympathy with it, all advocacy of its principles, and especially all office-holding under it, odious — disreputable — infamous. You may find your-

« Ibid., 56. “ Under date of Jan u ary 22, 1889. “ Cable’s diary, ibid. 57 self constrained to fill your offices with men who can face down the contumely of a whole people. You know what such men generally are. One out of a hundred may be a moral hero ■—■ the ninety-nine will be scamps; and the moral hero will most likely get his brains blown out early in the day. “Count O’Reilly, when he established the Spanish power here thirty-five years ago, cut a similar knot with the executioner’s sword; but, my-de-seh, you are here to establish a free government; and how can you make it freer than the people wish it? There is your riddle! They hold off and say, ‘Make your government as free as you can, but do not ask us to help you;’ and before you know it you have no retainers but a gang of shameless merce­ naries, who will desert you whenever the indignation of this people overbalances their indolence; and you will fall the victim of what you may call our mutinous patriotism.”

Even without the author’s own word for it, in his diary, we must take this as an expression of his opinions on the carpet­ bag government in New Orleans. As the carpetbag politicians were put out of office on April 24, 1877, it seems improbable — though not absolutely impossible — that Cable should have written these paragraphs at a later date. As the book contains 448 pages, this would seem to indicate that more than one- fourth of it was completed — if those paragraphs have not been inserted at a later date — by the end of April) 1877. Hjalmar Hjort Boyesen, whose letters to Cable have already been quoted from in the present work, proved to be a friend of Cable’s as helpful as Edward King. A native Norwegian, he had emigrated to America, studied hard and secured a pro­ fessorship of literature in Cornell University.^^ By the time he first wrote to Cable, he had also made a name for himself as a novelist. Prompted by admiration for his short stories, he entered into correspondence with Cable, and his letters show that a warm personal concern for the young Southern writer was soon added to his admiration. In the summer of 1877 he got Josiah Holland interested in the novel Cable was writing, and later in the year he offered Cable his help as he knew that his health was delicate. And he did what he

“ In a letter to Cable, dated January 20, 1878, he gives s^me interesting information about his life. As a “successful” immigrant he had had to take care of two brothers and later of his father and step­ mother with eight children who all came over from Norway. 58 could to encourage him: “You hardly know down there in the literary Sahara of the South how many hearty friends & warm admirers you have here in the North. I mean no disrespect to the South, but I have been there & know how uncongenial its atmosphere must be to a true artist.” On January 8, 1878, he had important news for Cable: I had the pleasure to-day to induce Mr. Scribner to undertake the publication of your short stories in book form, which I understand from Gilder he refused to do last year. I had two interviews with him on the subject, & finally succeeded in convincing him that you were a great man. * * * I shall rejoice with all my heart to see these delightful stories as a book. It is the first genuinely artistic contribution to our literature which the South has given us.‘*

Not long after, Cable was informed by Gilder by what means Boyesen had managed to convince Scribner. In a letter of January 23, 1878, Gilder writes: “I need not say how de— lighted I am at the chance of seeing your short stories brought out and your novel written. Be sure I will do all in my power to get the public waked up. Boyesen actually bribed (!) S. A. & Co. to take the short stories — I suppose he told you!” ®® But this supposition of Gilder’s was wrong, as is shown by a much later letter from Boyesen to Cable where Boyesen writes: “I foresaw clearly the success of ‘Old Creole Days’, & the bargain I made with Blair Scribner (Gilder tells me he wrote you about it, although it was my intention that you should never know of it) proved happily superfluous.” A few days after Cable had received the good news from Boyesen, the official confirmation came from Charles Scrib­ ner.®* Of course, he does not mention ^ Boyesen’s bargain but writes that as times have improved ®^ since Cable last heard

“ The letter is dated November 29, 1877. ' *• An cxtract of this letter has been printed by BikU, op. cit., 56. “ In quoting from this letter BikU (op. cit., 57) writes: “The next day [i.e. the day after Boyesen’s letter of January 8 was written] came word from Mr. Gilder”. But this letter of Gilder’s is dated January 23, and Bikli has probably mistaken it for a different letter from Gilder to Cable, dated January 9, 1878. » Dated August 26, 1879. « B ikli, op. cit., 57. “ The letter is dated January 12. 1878. 59

from them on the subject of publishing a collection of his short stories, they are now disposed to consider their publica­ tion more favourably. So Cable is asked to propose a title. In his r e p l y 55 Cable shows how pleased he is: “In accepting your proposition I beg to say that I think you are doing as you would that men would do to you.” And he goes on to propose Jadis as the title of the volume and give a very modest hint that he would like to see “Posson Jone’ ”, published by Appleton’s Journal, included in the collection. The latter idea found favour with the publishers, but not so the title proposed, the meaning of which they did not understand.^® The question of a title proved very hard to solve. Cable gave many suggestions, and at last Under the Cypress and Orange was decided upon. But suddenly, only a few weeks before publica­ tion, this title was found to be too long, and the publishers suggested, and the author gave his approval of. Old Creole ■ Days.^'^ And such was the title of the volume when, at last,®® on May 17, 1879, it was published.®*

“ This was not true, for in a letter of May 27, 1878, he writes to Cable: “The season just closing has been an exceedingly dull and depressed one.” “ Dated New Orleans, Ja n u a ry 16, 1878. Bikle, op. cit., 57—58. “ A letter to Cable from Scribner, Armstrong & Co., dated January 23, 1878. ” Other titles suggested were Prose Idyls For Hammock And Fan, Half-hours For Hammock And Fan, The Old Regime, Creoles et Creoles, A Peculiar People, Creoles Du VieuxTemps, Hammock And Fan, Out Of The Old French Quarter, and Spanish Afoss. See a letter from Cable to Scribner, Armstrong & Co., dated February 9, 1878, (printed by Bikl£, op. cit., 58—59), and letters from those publishers to Cable under dates of May 27, 1878, March 19, A pril 4 and 14, 1879. « Scribner had originally intended to bring out the book in April, 1878, but then — probably on account of the reorganization of the firm — the publication was postponed until the autumn. But when autumn came, another postponement, until next spring, was decided upon in order to make its publication coincide with the first instalment of the novel in the magazine. This plan could, however, not be followed up because the novel was not ready in the spring of 1879. See letters to Cable from Boyesen, dated July 20, 1878, from Scribner, Armstrong & Co. dated May 27, 1878, and from Charles Scribner’s Sons, dated October 10, 1878. “ A letter to Cable from C harles Scribner’s Sons, dated May 16, 1879. 5 * i;q ? u

jA r'/ 'i: t- 60

In the meantime the work on the novel was progressing. During the autumn of 1878 Cable had worked hard on it in order to finish it by January 1, 1879, as he had bound himself to do.®® This proved, however, impossible and even when, on February 5, 1879, the publishers reported that the manuscript of The Grandissimes had been received, it seems to have been only part of the novel; for on July 21 of that year Robert Underwood Johnson wrote to Cable, on behalf of Scribner’s Monthly: “The serial ought to be complete in our hand August 15.” And on March 4, Gilder had written to him: “Go on with the work and let us have it as soon as possible.” But to judge from a postcard from R. U. Johnson to Cable, dated August 18, 1879, the whole novel was in the hands of the editors by then. He writes; “Your MS contains a superb story, overlaid with too much purpose. A story without a purpose is an absurdity, but you have enough for three.” A lot of revisions remained, however, to be done before the first instalment could be printed in the November number of the magazine; and it is, indeed, surprising to read the long letters of detailed criticism that were sent to Cable from the editors. One, undated, is written by Gilder who thought that the worst thing about the story was “a curious pettiness of style which occasionally shows itself”. But he had also much praise for it:

The story clears up as he goes on and becomes really a story — and an interesting one. He makes the people, all of them, very real — and it seems to me this shows a good deal of imaginative strength, when you remember how many characters he is dealing with, and when you remember, moreover, that every character has to be a genuine creation, with nothing in fiction to guide him; for he is a pioneer in his field. And the characters are not only interesting because unusual, but intensely also in their truth to human nature. How capitally he gives us the relations between Aurora and

" In a letter dated November 16, 1878, he wrote to his sister Antoinette: “I am almost afraid to contemplate the work I am now engaged and compelled to finish by newyear’s day. I must use the early, twilight hours of the day; to be free from all interruption — company, children and all.” 61

ClotiJde — “Aurora” is certainly an addition to Ihe memorable ■women of fiction.®^ All the other letters are written by R. U. Johnson, who expresses, however, not only his own opinions but also those of the other editors. That the novel is being edited for seria­ lization is constantly kept in view. To catch the reader’s interest from the beginning was important, and therefore the opening had to be rewritten. Later, on R. U. Johnson’s sugges­ tion, a considerable change was made in the arrangement of the first chapters; the prelude, giving the family trees of the Grandissimes and the De Grapjons, was put as the fourth chapter and the novel was opened with the masked-ball in- cident.®2 At last Cable succeeded in making the first part of the novel satisfactory to his exacting editors; for on July 28, 1879, R. U. Johnson wrote: “Mrs. Herrick and I are both very much pleased with your version of the first part of ‘The Grandissimes’. It is now full of spunk and the first five chapters will make an excellent first installment well rounded and leaving the interest where it should be — fixed on the meeting of Frowenfeld and the Nancanous.” And still with the serialization in view he wrote on August 2 of the same year: “I am delighted with the Grandissimes as far as I have read. *** It divides into instalments beautifully. *** There are one or two places where you show a tendency to leave the novel and go pamphleteering a little. *** If you were not the best dramatic novelist now writing there would be some excuse for this — but having chosen a form of expression you must be faithful to its demands.” In his letter of August 22, 1879, R. U. Johnson criticized the hero of the book: “He is interesting at first but he dont keep up — you can calculate to a t what he will do. I implore you to let him knock Sylvestre over and vindicate his own manhood, even if he repent in sack cloth and in ashes. As it is, dont you see you are doing just what you dont want to do — making goodness seem unattain­ able because not mixed with enough humanity — human frailty, if you will.” And he shows that this criticism is " This criticism was evidently not intended for Cable but for some one on the editorial staff. " A letter to Cable from R, U. Johnson, dated March 26, 1879. 62 prompted not only by his professional interest but also by a personal interest in the success of Cable’s work: “I do not speak idly of these things, my dear Mr. Cable. *** Do you know that I am as much interested in your story and its success as you can be?” R. U. Johnson had criticized the scene between Honors Grandissime and Joseph Frowenfeld at the graves,®^ and his letter to Cable of September 2, 1879, proves that Cable had acted upon his advice. He writes: “In the last chapter [of the March instalment] you can do Joseph a great favor by reducing the discussion a half in bulk, as you did in the scene at the Graves.” Many other changes were made, as is indicated by the same letter. “I have reread the Deer, and January instalments since your revision,” the editor writes. “Every touch is an improvement and the total value of these instal­ ments is increased 50 %." It is evident that expectations with regard to the novel were great among the editors of the magazine, and even Josiah Holland and his vdfe read it in manuscript. They were delighted with the story, R. U. Johnson informed Cable,®® especially with the Nancanous and the Creole dialect, “which is a great charm”. R. U. Johnson had evidently set his heart on having Cable change the Joseph-Sylvestre encounter, for he told him ®® that he woke of mornings with the prayer that Cable would let Joseph’s passion get the better of his judgment; and in another letter «« he wrote: “ * * * be simple and straightforward in expression, and if possible let Jos. knock Sylvestre down.” But Cable was evidently not inclined to let his hero behave like his irascible Creole characters, and this thrice repeated advice was disregarded.*^ About the inception and writing of The Grandissimes Cable gives us some information in his article “After-thoughts of a

•• In h is letter to Cable of Angust 2, 1879. « The Grandissimes, chapter VII. “ In a letter of September 26, 1879. *• Dated October 2, 1879. " See The Grandissimes, 316—317. 63

Story-telIer”.8* He was spurred on to write the novel by “a sanguine friend”, he tells us. I can still hear him calling down the stairway from the door of his office; “Begin it! Never mind how it’s to come out; you have abundant invention; trust to that.” And, if I remember aright, the story was written without a single preliminary memorandum of its scheme. Yet I had a scheme clearly in mind; a scheme in which one of the first things decided was how the tale should end. For the rest it consisted mainly in a choice and correlation of the charac­ ters I designed to put upon my stage. The plot was not laboriously planned. It was to be little more than the very old and familiar one of a feud between two families, the course of true love fretting its way through, and the titles of hero and heroine open to com­ petition between a man and his friend for the one and a mother and daughter for the other. Upon this well-used skeleton I essayed to put the flesh and blood, the form and bloom, of personalities new to the world of fiction. To do this and to contrive a plausible variety of scenes and incidents that should secure to these children of the fancy the smiling acquaintance of the reading world, were far more than a sufficient tax on the supposed redundancy of my powers of invention. That fountain never overflowed.*** Death early took from me the generous prompter of my stimu­ lating delusion. It is very pleasant, this opportunity to speak of him with sincere gratitude. He helped me to make a very valuable mistake. To be emboldened by his compliments was easy, for he was a distinguished physician, of high literary attainments, and had been the friend of Pinkney, Timrod, and William Gilmore Sims. I never put more thaA a hint or two of him into any fictional character. It may be added that this prompter of Cable’s “stimulating delusion” was probably a physician named J. Dickson Bruns, from whom the author received many valuable letters of criticism of The Grandissimes, particularly on matters of style. When the first instalment of The Grandissimes appeared in Scribner’s Monthly, in November 1879, Cable was already a comparatively well-known author. The sale of Old Creole Days had by far exceeded expectations. The first edition, of only one hundred copies,«» was soon exhausted, partly through " North American Review, January, 1894. •• This number shows how small the expectations of the publishers had been. 64

Cable’s efforts to push the sale in New Orleans,"o and in August, 1879, a second edition was printedJi Six months after the first appearance of the book, twelve hundred copies had been sold, which Charles Scribner considered “an unusual beginning for a volume of short stories”J2 Now everything was done to assure the success of The Grandissimes. After the careful revision, an extensive adver­ tising program was carried out. The first two chapters were sent out in advance to 2,500 editors all over the country. When the serial started, R. U. Johnson was highly pleased. He wrote to C a b l e “j wish I could have a long talk with you, my dear Cable. To me you are the coming man.” The last instalment of The Grandissimes appeared in the issue of October, 1880, but shortly before that the novel had been published in book-form.^< By that time another manu­ script of Cable’s had arrived in the offices of Charles Scribner’s Sons, that of Madame Delphine, which was published as a serial in Scribner’s Monthly for May, June, and July, 1881, in book-form the same year, and later included in O ld Creole Days. And once more the new “Cable” was highly appreciated by the editors. Roswell Smith, for instance, wrote the following to Cable in a letter of March 5, 1881: Last night we read aloud in our family circle (Rev Dr Robinson also present) Madame Delphine, and our admiration of the story, and our appreciation of it, it is beyond my power to state — the text, and the sermon touched me very much for I read between the lines, and I read this as your prayer for those who daily, and hourly threaten your life, and, I seriously fear that your life is in danger — when I think of your heroism, my petty troubles * * * seem petty indeed.

” On June 10, 1879, his publishers wrote to him: “Permit us to thank you for the pains you have taken to make the book known in N. O. The orders from there have been very remarkable and altogether unprecedented.” A letter to Cable from Charles Scribner’s Sons, dated August 15, 1879. ” In his letter to Cable, dated February 25, 1880. ” On December 2, 1879. '* A letter to Cable from Charles Scribner’s Sons, dated June 11, 1880. CHAPTER VI

IN THE HOUSE IN EIGHTH STREET

During the years in which he wrote his first short stories and his first novel, Cable had to surmount many difficulties. There were economic problems, for with his modest salary he had to support both his growing family and his mother. His own health gave way several times under the strain of office w'ork combined with hard study and writing, and his wife’s health was still more delicate. Sometimes Cable was in despair. On November 1, 1873, he wrote to his mother: I am in a narrow place. My poor wife’s feeble frame stands like a sunken wreck right in the channel of all my plans for our mutual comfort and happiness. Just when I calculated she would be strong and active and could come over to the city and select a residence that could suit us all, she has broken down and is not at present able even to undertake the 4 hours trip to town. I have now no time to look for a house;, yet one must be had, for I am pretty nearlj" comfortless in my ])resent situation.

It is evident that his work was uncongenial to him, though he soon conceived a sincere affection for his two employers.i But in spite of his preoccupation with literary matters he did not neglect his office duties. In addition to his regular work with Wm. C. Black & Co., cotton-factors and commission merchants, he became Treasurer’s Clerk and Secretary of the Finance Committee of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. When, in 1881, he resigned his position on the Cotton Exchange, he received the following communication signed by one of its officials: “The books and documents of your department bear evidence of skill and neatness and are the best witnesses of a

“My P olitics”. 66

faithful performance of duties characteristic of your manage­ ment.” 2 His political convictions were also a source of unhappiness to Cable. He discussed the Negro problem only with his rela­ tives and his most intimate friends. “With no others did I venture in those fierce days to argue; but kept a silence which I felt almost constantly ashamed of.” Finding his views on this subject directly opposed to those of other Southerners, he “suffered as a man must who unwillingly finds himself heretical to the church he loves and venerates”.* But to a Northerner, J. Wells Champney, the illustrator who visited New Orleans in the company of Edward King, he evidently dared confide his trouble, for in 1874 Champney wrote to C a b le “My sympathies are with you in your political suf­ ferings; I sincerely wish you a satisfactory and speedy solution to your miseries.” In 1874, however. Cable had the satisfaction of moving into a house of his own, the first permanent home he had had since his parents had been obliged to move from the house in Annunciation Square in his early boyhood. The house, built under his own direction, was situated in Eighth Street in the, at that time, fashionable “garden district” of New Orleans. It was painted in soft tones of olive and red, and in front of it was a lawn bordered with flowers. Two large orange-trees formed an arch above the flight of steps that led up to the galerie. Behind the house was a garden with fig-trees. The interior was “cosy and tasteful, without any attempt at display”.® This house, after a time, became something of a cultural centre in New Orleans. Among visitors from far away were Edward King, Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, Richard Watson Gilder, Charles Dudley Warner, and Oscar Wilde. But there was also a circle of New Orleans friends of Cable’s that

• Bikl£, op. cit., 41. The letter is now in the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans. • Cable’s diary, under date of January 10, 1889. * The letter is dated November 16, 1874. * Wetherill, “George W. Cable”, Critic, October 9, 1886. Later re­ published in Authors At Home, edited by J. L. and J. B. Gilder. 67

gathered there more or less regularly to talk or to hear Cable sing Creole songs and Scotch ballads or read a selection from some book he had enjoyed, for instance Richard Malcolm Johnston’s Dukesborough Tales.^ There was in this group a Spanish painter and “a tall poetic man” whose name was Edward Livingstone; there was “a little dried up, frightfully untidy scientist with great glasses”, the Baron von Reizen- stein, and “his quiet little wife who followed him like a shadow”;® and, from the end of the 1870’s, ther^ appeared a small, strange, timid man — Lafcadio Hearn. Prompted by an irresistable longing for the colourful and the exotic, Hearn had left Cincinnati and had arrived in New Orleans some time in November, 1877. Before leaving Ohio he had read Cable’s story “Jean-ah-Poquelin”, which may have been the direct cause of his choice of New Orleans. Anyway, the story had made him want to meet its author, and it does not seem to have been long before he got to know him.^ Living in the old French Quarter, Hearn at once became fascinated by its romantic atmosphere. Here he found Creoles of French and Spanish descent, Negroes of different races who still preserved something of their African customs, mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons, Mexicans, Italians, Irish­ men and Germans, sailors and fishermen. The French spoken by the Creoles and their Negro servants had a special appeal to him, and he began to make a thorough study of it. He also became a collector of Creole folklore.® It was this interest in Creole language and folklore that made him seek the company of Cable, who was also a student of these subjects. They had other points in common, too. They took a keen interest in literature. Hearn was a reader of all sorts of foreign literature, Icelandic, Norwegian, French,

• An undated letter from Louise Cable Chard to Lucy Cable Bikl£, evidently written after their father’s death. ’ The first of his (published) letters in which Hearn mentions having met Cable is dated New Orleans, 1878. See Elizabeth Bisland, L ife and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, I, 175. • For the result of Hearn’s Creole studies see L. Hearn, iln American Miscellang, II. 68

Oriental etc., and it seems very probable that he exercised some influence on Cable’s views on, and knowledge of, lite- rature. They both loved music, and they both loved beauty in every form, though Cable’s was a m oderate, Hearn’s a more sensuous love. They had the same att tude towards the Negro — they took an artistic interest in his customs and language and they pitied his social conditions and they were both animated by a zeal for social and sanitary reform. But there was one question on which they held entirely different views, that of religion. Cable was a firm belie ver in Christianity who, at that time, followed every word of the Bible, while Hearn was a pagan. Since Cable and Hearn lived in the same city, it is not surprising that we find only a few letlters from Hearn among Cable’s papers. The following, undated, letter shows some­ thing of the collaboration of the two [writers. My dear Mr. Cable: I received your note, and will be on ti me — unless it is raining very hard; then I suppose, it would be no use. Five o’clock p.m. Saturday. Maisonneuve will write directly to you about the book. Madeleine Achard, a young man who came to Ne IV Orleans in 1682, or to Louisiana, and spent 35 years teaching in the colony, is the author, The book is a reprint of the original (v hereof only 3 copies are known to exist), and of the reprint only 100 copies were printed small quarto. I told publisher to secure 2d-hand copy if the d him w ho wan ted it, soedition be exhausted, and of course I tol d him who wanted it, soedition that he might exert himself and hop aiound lively in search of a copy — in other words “hump himselif” Believe me truly Lafcadio Hearn \ We also find some information about his relations to Cable in the letters Hearn wrote to H. E. Krehbiel, the New York music critic. In 1878 he told him that George Cable, “a charming writer” of “dainty New Orleans stories”, was working on a study of Creole music and that he himself had helped Cable in collecting songs for it. But Cable had the advantage of him in being able to write music by ear, he added.® In 1881 he wrote Krehbiel that he was a little dis­ • Elizabeth Bisland, op. cit.. I, 175. 69 appointed with Cable’s Grandissimes, because he had not followed out his plan, which he had told Hearn about, to scatter some fifty Creole songs through the book. And the few songs that were included in the novel were not given in a way satisfactory to Hearn. Cable had failed to catch the fractions of tones in the Creole music — “he is not enough of a musician, I fancy, for that”.i® As Cable was able to transcribe the notes of birds’ song and Hearn was unable to write down the music of the songs he collected — “I have many ditties in my head, but I cannot write them down,” he writes to Krehbiel “ — we have reason to believe that this criticism of Cable’s rendering of Creole music was dictated by envy. However, he admired Cable’s stories. He wrote no less than five favour­ able reviews of The Grandissimes in the New Orleans Item , to which he was a regular contributor.12 To Krehbiel he wrote that there was something very singular to him in Cable’s power. He had not a superior style, but his stories had “a puissant charm which is hard to analyze”.A n d in his article “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances” Hearn was very enthusiastic about Old Creole Days. Early in 1883 H a rp er’s sent J. O. Davidson, the marine painter, to New Orleans with a view to securing some con­ tributions from Cable.But, feeling a strong loyalty to S crib n e r’s and the Century, Cable refused to consider David­ son’s offer. Instead he introduced Davidson to Hearn, who, though he did not like Davidson, was willing to write some articles for H a rp er’s. The following, undated, letter from Hearn to Cable seems to have been written shortly after

Ibid., I, 228—229. Ibid., I, 212. '* Tinker, Lafcadio Hearn’s American Dags, 126. E. Bisland, op. cit.. I, 289. '* Davidson was in New Orleans on February 7, 1883, as is shown by a letter from him to Cable, and an undated letter from Hearn to Cable indicates that his visit was very short. A letter of introduction by the editor of Harper’s Weekly brought by Davidson to Cable is dated January 23, 1883, and it seems probable that it was written shortly before Davidson left for New Orleans. According to this letter Harper’s wanted Cable to write three articles “on subjects in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana”. 70

Da^'idson’s visit. Like the one earlier quoted, this letter in­ dicates what were the points of contact between the two men. My dear Mr. Cable: I am glad you like Juriault; — he is a finer linguist than Thomas; and I find his book far richer in curiosities. I believe it is the best that has been written, as I find complimentary references to it by the great linguists and folk-lore' collectors of France. It pleases me very much to ^ learn that you met Henry Farny. Farny is an Alsatian — a countryman of Dore’s — and possesses a peculiar talent worthy of his famous compatriot. * * * I will come up next Thursday; Thanks for kind invitation. I want to hear about that poetess . . .! Davidson has departed. His departure really relieved me. There wasi a tempestuous atmosphere about him redolent of furious hurry ^nd labor. He is the most prodigious worker I ever met — laboring assiduously at least 16 hours of the 24, — has the strength ofja riverhorse and the con­ stitution of a tortoise. He rushed through these regions like an express, leaving behind him everywhfere a trail of unfinished business and correspondence for his friends to pick up and send after him. *** I suspect he did not realiy appreciate the pictures­ que of N. O.; for I hold him to be severely dry; but we have not yet had a chance to judge him oii this score, as the Creole sketches have not appeared. Harper’s treated me well. I received $ 60 for the St Malo article and $ 24 for the Cotton exchange. Believe me faithfully yours L. Hearn

There is nothing in this letter to show that there was any­ thing but friendly feelings between Cable and Hearn at the time, and this is interesting in view of the fact that in the same year, that of 1883, Hearn wrote ihese lines to Krehbiel: “*** don’t try to conceive how I could sympathize with Cable! Because I never sympathized with hitn at all. His awful faith —• which to me represents an undeveloped mental structure — gives a neutral tint to his whole life among us.” And on October 8, 1884, Marion Baker wrote to Cable, telling him that Hearn had written a notice of Cable’s Dr. Sei ier,i adding that he “does not care for you to know. He is hopeles sly down upon you.” The real cause of Hearn’s ill-feeling towards Cable was, however, not so much their different views on ^religion as Hearn’s envy

“ E. Bisland, op. cit.. I, 295. 71

when he heard that Cable and Krehbiel were collaborating on a collection of Creole songs.i® Thus Hearn and Cable drifted from each other, and when, in 1884, Cable moved from the South, there was no attempt at a correspondence between them. After Cable had published his “Freedman’s Case in Equity”, in January, 1885, Hearn made an open attack on him in an editorial in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, entitled “Mr. Violet Cable’’.^^

“ Tinker, Lafcadio Hearn’s American Dags, 186. Vera McWilliams, Lafcadio Hearn, 158. ” V. M cW illiams, op. cit., 158. CHAPTER VII

FIRST VISITS TO THE NORTH

However much he loved his native city, Cable had a strong longing for the cultural life of the North.^ In the summer of 1875 he made his first visit to New Yotk, and on his way there he also visited Havana. He seems to have been far from favourably impressed with the latter city, to which his father had once wanted to emigrate. The streets were too narrow, and so were the sidewalks. Everything showed trifling, pleasure- seeking, indolence, and cruelty. The city was one mighty stench, he found, and after the daily rains, a perfect pig-sty.^ Cable’s keen enjoyment of natural scenery is a trait of which one finds evidence in many of his letters and which indeed left an imprint on most of what he wrote. Here we find it in these lines to his mother and sister written ® on board I the ship that carried him North from Cuba: “As I approach the land once more I hasten to send a word and kiss to my dear ones. Would I could show the lovely scene before me. Yesterday we were on a lonely ocean. Today as we enter Delaware Bay the water is alive with kails. Sixty vessels were in sight at once about an hour ago. No w a great ship glides by with all sail set, now a schooner. *** But enough I only intended to say two words — one is I am enjoying myself intensely; the other is God bless you.’’

‘ After attending a concert in New York iii 1883 he wrote to his wife: “At last I at last I after almost 40 years of waiting, 1 hear the best music!” Bikli, op. cit., 105. ' A letter to his mother, headed Havana, July 7, 1875. Bikld, op. cit., 52. • On Ju ly 11, 1875. 73

In New York, Cable, of course, made a visit to the editorial office of Scribner’s Monthly, where the “peculiar pleasure it brought” was long remembered.^ He met Gilder, though later, in a letter to Cable,s Gilder regretted that he had not been able to see more of him. Then he seems to have made a trip to Niagara,® and after his return to New York he met Frank R. Stockton, the writer, who showed him “some of the wonders of Gotham”.^ He also visited the Appletons, and to his great delight, it seems, Appleton took him round to “two or three of the nabobs of the neighborhood in their splendid villas”.* His new experiences — and the bracing air — had a stimu­ lating effect on him. There is a note of exhiliration in his letters home, so much so that he noticed it himself; for in one of them he wrote: “Don’t I write like a college boy? And why shouldn’t I? It’s vacation, you know.” « But his vacation was a rather short one, for he seems to have been back in New Orleans some time in August; anyway, he was there in the beginning of September.^ In the summer of 1880 Cable paid another visit to the North.io This time he met his publisher, Charles Scribner, who found great pleasure in making the acquaintance of the young writer with whom he had carried on a correspondence for several years.ii But he did not see Dr Holland, and he seems to have expressed his disappointment in a letter to him, judging from the following letter, which I reproduce in full as another proof of the editors’ high appreciation of Cable.

• According to a letter to Cable from A. W. Drake, dated November 29, 1875. ‘ Dated Septem ber 12, 1875. • A. W. Drake writes to him under date of August 10, 1875: “I suppose you enjoyed Niagara very much.” ’ A letter to his mother, dated July 19, 1875. Bikle, op. cit., 52. • Ibid., 53. • A letter to Cable from A. W. Drake, headed New York, August 19,1875, indicates that Cable had left New York by then; and there is a letter from Cable to his mother, headed New Orleans, September 9, 1875, (Bikle, op. cit., 53). ’• This visit is not mentioned by BikU (op. cit.). “ A letter from Scribner to Cable, dated October 22, 1880. 74

New York Sept. 25. 1880. My Dear Mr Cable: — There are two disappointed men: Cable and Holland. I am more sorry that I did not see you than I can tell you. I have such abounding faith in your capacity to do great things; I have such admiration for your skill in doing the things you have already accomplished, not to speak of the courage it required to publish the Grandissimes in the face of a Southern community, that it would give me the heartiest pleasure to take your hand and bid you “god speed” viva voce. Rejoice, oh young man, in thy youth! Rejoice while you may, in looking forward upon intellectual activity and artistic invention. The time has come to me when my volulmes are counted, and I am looking back upon the delightful'years of production. You have made a field and are its only occupant. You are doing more to elevate the literary reputation of the South than any other man in it — I may almost say than all otl^er men in it. I wanted to talk with you about your work. I hope to see much more of it in the magazine, and to see you enjoying a prosperous literary life. The next time you come North come to see me and stay with me at “Bonnei Castle” on the St Lawrence. I shall not forget the in­ vitation, and you will be very welcome. Yours truly J. G. Holland

About eight months later Cable was again on his way to the North. His wife’s delicate health had made him decide to bring her, and their four daughters, from ihe tropically humid heat of New Orleans to the bracing air pf the White Mountains. After seeing his family settled in Franconia he stayed for a couple of weeks in New York on his [way back to Louisiana.i* In New York fa? met so many celebrities, literary and other­ wise, and liad on the whole such a slplendid time that a short time afterwards he wrote about this visit as “the greatest holiday” of his life.^^ He started his sojourn by dropping in on the Gilders, who had an at home nce a week in their small apartment in East 15th Street. Here Mrs Gilder, sitting calmly knitting, was unobtrusively the gi iding hostess, while her

“ There are letters from him dated NeW York, Jnne 4, 7 and 14, 1881.

O d Jnne 22 he was in Georgia on his wajlhome, and b y Jnne 24 he was back In New Orleans. See letters of those dates in Bikli, op. eit., 66— 71. “ In a letter to his Wife, dated Jnne 22, 1881. BikU, op. cit., 70. 75 husband, boyishly gay, went from group to group, letting his laugh rise above the voices of his guests. Here would gather some of the most prominent figures in the artistic world of New York, e.g. Stedman, the poet, Saint-Gaudens, the sculptor, and Jefferson, the actor.i< It was probably here that Cable made the acquaintance of Saint-Gaudens, with whom he was very pleased.^® His editors and publishers made a great deal of Cable during this stay of his in New York. He was invited home to Alexander Drake,i8 and he was twice taken out for a drive in Central Park by Roswell Smith.i'^ while Charles Scribner invited him to a “Strawberry Night” at the Century Club is and arranged for his portrait to be painted by the artist Thayer.^® But more important was the fact that he made the acquaintance of some of America’s foremost writers of that time. And wherever he went he captured the hearts of his hosts. He made a visit to Mary Hallock Foote, who took an “instant and entire faith” in him; and a few months later she wrote to him that his visit had taken its place permanently in the calendar of their brightest family days.*® It was also natural for Cable to go and see William Dean Howells, who was a warm admirer of local-colour writers. One may wonder whether, when the two writers met at Belmont, Massachusetts, where Howells was then living, either of them remembered the fact that, almost six years earlier, Howells, in his capacity of editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly, had rejected one of Cable’s short stories, “Bibi”. Anyway, Howells was very favourably impressed by the young Southerner, and later he wrote to John Hay that Cable was “the loveliest and

“ F. Tooker, The Joys and Tribulations of an Editor, 168. W. W. Ellsworth, A Golden Age of Authors, 149— 150. A letter to his mother, dated June 4, 1881. Bikl£, op. cit., 67. " His invitation is dated June 1, 1881. In a letter to his wife, dated June 4, 1881, Cable mentions this visit as “a nice teaparty”. Ibid., 67. " On June 6 and 14, 1881. See his letters dated June 7 and 14, 1881. Ibid., 68— 70. “ On June 4, 1881. See a letter of that date from Cable to his mother. Ibid., 67. '• A letter to his wife, dated June 4, 1881. Ibid., 66— 67. The letter is dated Septem ber 11, 1881. 6 76 loyalest exrebel that lives” and that he had taken all their hearts away with him.^i This visit of Cable’s to Belmont resulted in an interesting correspondence between the two novelists which was carried on, with intervals, until Howells’s death in 1920.22 Returned to New Orleans, Cable wrote Howells a letter, telling him that he was “launching the Grandissimes” at him at the same time. But the “engine-room atmosphere” 2* of New Orleans had evidently had its effect on Cable, for in his reply 24 Howells thanked him for a copy of Madame Delphine and expressed the hope that Mary Hallock Foote, to whom it was inscribed, would like his copy of The Grandissimes. To which Cable, in his turn, replied;25 “ I don’t any more know where your copy of the Grandissimes is than I know who sent the infernal machines to England. I haven’t the stamina to attempt another shipment; I should find I had sent Madame Delphine to the Grandissimes and Mrs. Mary Hallock Foote to you.” After his visit to Belmont Cable vfent to Hartford to see Charles Dudley Warner, and here again he made firm friends. In a letter to his wife 28 Cable wrote of Charles Dudley Warner, his brother and sister-in-law as “these kind, gentle, hearty friends”, finding it hard to realize that he had known them only four days. And a few weeks later Warner wrote to Cable;27 “You left a most delightful memory behind' you in Hartford, whatever you took away, and I only continually regret that my illness prevented a more aggressive hospitality.” He had been over to see Cable’s wife and children in Franconia, he wrote, and he was able to give good 'news about their health: “If such plump, rosy, happy-looking ,Children grow naturally

" Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, edited by Mildred Howells, I. 312. “ See “The Cable-Howells Correspondence”, edited by Kjell Ekstrom, Studia Neophilologica, XXII, No. 1, 1950. “ Cable’s expression in his letter to Howells of Jnly 30, 1881. Bikld, op. cit., 72. “ Dated Belmont, July 17, 1881. Howells’s letters to Cable are in the Cable Collection, Tnlane University, New Orleans. Under date of Joly 30, 1881. Bikl£, op. cit., 72. “ Dkted Jttne 14, 1881. Ibid., 69. ” The letter is headed Profile House, New Hampshire, Jnly 4, 1881. 77 in New Orleans, I am glad you are in the Union. Mrs. Cable seems to be imbibing vigor in this wonderful air.” From the same letter it appears that they had been discussing business during Cable’s Hartford sojourn. Warner was negotiating with Houghton, Mifflin & Co. about the American Men of Letters Series, and he had evidently proposed that Cable should con­ tribute a volume to it, for he writes: “The volume from you is certain to be one of the best and perhaps the most im­ portant, and one likely to attract most attention here and in England. *** It seems to me that probably Gilmore Sims is the best figure to group it about.” And in a later letter *8 he returns to the same subject: “You could, in reason, take your own time in preparing your volume — for each biographical study will be a separate affair, like the English Men of Letters. With your subject in view, you would without cons6ious effort be accumulating materials for it. You know our plan was to make some Southern author — and I suppose Sims is the best for the purpose — the center for a study of Southern literature in the old days, such as you can do better than any other man. And it is something worth doing for your reputa­ tion in England as well as in America.” Cable evidently under­ took to write the biography of Simms, for he made some research on his life, but he probably never found the time to write the book.^s When Cable came to Hartford, Mark Twain was not at home, but the Warners telegraphed for him to come back. So he did, taking the first train after the receipt of the telegram. Mrs Clemens was with him, “inviting herself”, as she said. "And so I met Mark Twain,” Cable writes to his wife.^o “We all

« Dated Ju ly 24, 1881. '• In the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans, there are some indications of his having gathered material for a biography of Simms. He evidently asked Gayarr6 for material, for in a letter of January 10, 1882, the latter sent Cable seven letters from Simms, declaring that these letters were all he could find and adding as an explanation that in view of his age he had destroyed most of his correspondence. There is also a letter from one J. W. Simons, headed Philadelphia, December 9, 1885, and written in response to a request from Cable for some informa­ tion about Simms. « Under date of June 14, 1881. Bikl6, op. cit., 69. 78 lunched together & ‘Mark’ & Mr. Warner were ever so funny. But soon the Clemenses had to bid us good-bye & return to the cars to New Haven. I will tell you all about it some day, from the hearty meeting to the pleasant but regretful parting.” And the Clemenses seem to have been as pleased with Cable as he was with them, for it must be to them as well as the Warners that Howells refers when writing the following to Cable ;3i “You devastated our hearts wherever you went. Those Hartford people made me furious with their praises of you. I hate to see people foolish about a man, even if he is a great artist and every way charming.” One more literary celebrity was among Cable’s new acquaint­ ances during that visit to the North, Harriet Beecher Stowe. She and Cable spent a Sunday evening together and had a long delightful talk about the South.^^ Cable also met James Osgood, the Boston publisher, who persuaded him to let him have his next book. This, of course, did not please Charles Scribner, who declared him self rathelr harshly disappointed, but Cable managed to mollify both him and his assistant, E. L. Burlingame.®* In the spring of the following year, that of 1882, Cable and Mark Twain renewed their acquaintance. In 1875 Mark Twain had published a series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly on “Old Times on the Mississippi”, and he had long intended to make a book out of this material. But he wished to revive his impressions of the river before writing the book, and he did not find time for a trip to the Wtest and the South until 1882. In the summer of 1881 he and Howells had been planning to make the journey down the Mississippi together in the following autumn,** but Howells changed his mind and Mark Twain got another travelling-companion, James R. Osgood.®*

• « Under date of July 17, 1881. | “ A letter from Cable to his wife, dateki Jnne 14, 1881. Bikl£, op. cit., 70. I « L etters fi^m Cable to his wife, dated June 7, 14 and 22, 1881. Ibid., 68—70. ‘ A letter from Cable to Howells, dated July 30, 1881. Ibid., 72. “ Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain, 735. To judge from a telegram to Cable sent from Memphis, Tennessee, on April 23, 1882, Mark Twain 79

In Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain has given a descrip­ tion of their visit to New Orleans. Cable acted as the party’s guide through the Vieux Cai-r6, and Mark Twain calls it a privilege to have for a guide “the South’s finest literary genius, the author of The Grandissimes". “With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and illuminate, a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure,” he writes. They visited the old St. Louis Hotel, where Mark Twain could not find any evidence that a broom or a shovel had ever been used. They saw the cathedral and Jackson Square, “lovely with orange trees and blossomy shrubs”. And then they crossed the swamps to have dinner at West End on the shore of Lake Ponchartrain, where they had pompano, a fish “delicious as the less criminal forms of sin”. In his inimitable way, Mark Twain tells us of their visit to Cable’s house together with Joel Chandler Harris.^® When the party arrived at the house in Eighth Street, they were greeted by a flock of children who had come to catch a glimpse of “the illustrious sage and oracle of the nation’s nurseries”. How great was their surprise when they found that “Uncle Remus” was white! Harris was asked to read one of his stories to the children, but he was too shy to read in public, and so Cable and Mark Twain had to read about Brer Rabbit. And then Cable entertained his guests by reading selections from Old Creole Days, The Grandissimes, and the manuscript of a novel on which he was writing at the time, Dr. Sevier. In September of that year of 1882 Cable once more went to the North to meet his friends, to discuss business with his publishers, and to recover his health away from the depressing and James Osgood arrived in New Orleans towards the end of April. The telegram reads; “Clemens and I will arrive in New Orleans next Saturday or Sunday and will be at St Charles Hotel. James R. Osgood.” *• 243—275. ” Mark Twain and Osgood were accompanied by a young man, Roswell Phelps, who was engaged as a stenographer. Paine, op. cit., 735. ” Life on the Mississippi, 274—275. In his speech at the dinner given in celebration of Mark Twain’s 70th birthday Cable gave some recollec­ tions of the same event. See Mark Twain's 70th Birthday. 80 heat of the Crescent City.39 During this New York sojourn of his he spent many evenings with the Gilders, whom he liked best of all his Northern friends;^® and in their home he made many new acquaintances among the writers, painters, and actors of New York. One evening, while Cable was having “a cup of delicious tea” with the Gilders and Charles DeKay, Joseph Jefferson, the famous comedian, dropped in. In spite of Jefferson’s association with the theatre, about which he still entertained certain scruples, Cable took an instant liking to him, finding him good and sweet, and they had a three hours’ talk.A few days later he met, again at Gilder’s, Madame Modjeska, the tragedienne, whom he found to be “a sweet, handsome, witty, gentle woman”; and with her husband, a Polish nobleman, he had an interesting talk about Shake­ speare.Not long after that, still another actress found equally great favour with Cable. It was Clara Louise Kellogg, the opera singer, whom Cable met at one of Gilder’s Friday nights. Cable, on this occasion, entertained the company, which in­ cluded Joseph and Jeanette Gilder of the Critic and Robert Underwood Johnson and his wife, by singing some Creole songs, and Clara Louise Kellogg contributed to the entertain­ ment with some Negro songs, accompanying herself on the banjo. Late in the evening the Gilders and Cable walked home with her, and they agreed to meet in her home in a few days. “What a time we’ll have!” Cable exclaims enthusiastically.^^ Two weeks later Cable again spent “a glorious evening” with the four Gilders and Miss Kellogg, and what he writes to his wife about this occasion shows that he was at that time able to appreciate good acting off the stage. The following year, after seeing Joseph Jefferson in a play, he was ready to admit that going to the theatre could be “as pure & sweet &

” According to the New Orleans Times-Democrat of Septem ber 20, 1882, Cable left on the preceding day “to be absent about 6 weeks”. ** “The Gilders are the nicest of all,” he wrote to his wife on Sep­ tem ber 28, 1882. Bikle, op. cit., 82. A letter to his wife, dated September 25, 1882. Ibid., 81. *■ letter to his wife, dated September 28, 1882. Ibid., 82. “ In a letter to his wife, dated October 8, 1882. Ibid., 84. “ Under date of October 21, 1882. Ibid., 85—86. 81 refreshing & proper a diversion as spending the same length of time over a pretty, sweet, good story-book”. During that visit to the North, John Burroughs was one of Cable’s new acquaintances. They spent an evening together at the Gilders’, talking about birds.^® Towards the end of the sojourn Gilder and Cable made a trip to Baltimore, where they met Daniel C. Gilman, of Johns Hopkins University. This meeting resulted in an invitation to Cable to deliver eight lectures in that university in March of the following year. The city of New York seems also to have made >a favourable impression on Cable. This is what he writes after a sunset walk on B ro a d w a y “What a mighty throng of cheerful faces] You know how I prize a cheerful face — & here are thousands. What glitter! what elegance! what wealth! what beauty!”

A letter from Cable to his wife, headed New York, October 27, 1883. Ibid., 102. “ A letter from Cable to his wife, dated October 11, 1882. Ibid., 84. " In a letter to his wife, dated September 29, 1882. Ibid., 82—83. CHAPTER VIII

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA AND DR. SEVIER

Late in 1879 Cable’s employer, Wm. C. Black, died.i “I never lost a dearer friend,” Cable vrrites in “My Politics”. “I tarried two or three months to make his affairs intelligible to his executors and then withdrew finally from counting-house work. I hoped to make literature my sole calling.* But he retained his position as secretary in the Cotton Exchange, a position which, however, does not seem to have required his daily presence. Nevertheless it was not a real sinecure — in a letter to Mary Hallock Foote ^ he complains about the trouble that the falsifications and peculations of his employees have caused him — and he was probably only too glad to resign it. On October 8, 1881, he writes to William Dean Howells: Shall I tell you what I have done today? I have renounced the world — of commerce. “The last link is broken” — I have resigned from my secretaryship in the cotton exchange and closed up my office. Nothing now for offense of defense but my grey goose quill!

Roswell Smith, after being informed about this decision, wrote to Cable: “I confess I look with apprehension on your giving up your salaried position. Literary work is too pre­ carious and the best work pays too little. — I do not see how you can possibly live by your pen.” Evidently Cable had written to him about plans to move a-vVay from the South, for he goes on to dissuade the young author from doing so.

* In a letter, dated December 2, 1879, R. U. Johnson writes to Cable: “I regret to see the announcement of the death of your chief, in this mornings paper.” ' Dated November 15, 1881. Rikle, op. cit., 74. 83 pointing out the danger of his being removed from the atmos­ phere and the types, from which he drew his best inspiration.* For the time being Cable gave up his plans to live in the North, blit he was resolved to make literature his sole calling. “Literature meant, to me, belles lettres,” he writes in “My Politics”. “Yet I made an odd digression from belles lettres, for all that. The Government had commissioned Col. Geo. E. Waring, Jr., to gather the ‘social statistics of cities’ to consist of an untabulated, encyclopedic report from a sel,ected expert in each of the great cities of the Union. On starting for New Orleans a friend of his handed him ‘Old Creole Days’ to read on the train. On reaching the scene of those tales he sought their author and offered him the commission for reporting New Orleans. It was accepted.” This commission was received by Cable in March, 1880.< A few months later, while at work on the New Orleans report, he was asked by the Superintendent of the Census for 1880 to make a special study of the trades, customs and dialect of the Acadians.5 This additional task was also accepted by Cable, who, for the purpose of gathering information, made a visit to the country of the Acadians in the autumn of that year,8 a visit that, several years later, was to bear literary fruit in Bonaventure. It may be pointed out that this was his second visit to these parts of Louisiana, situated more than one hundred miles west of NeV Orleans, the first visit having been made fourteen years earlier with sad consequences.' While during his earlier visit he had studied the natural history of the region, mainly in the wilderness along the rivers, he now, in 1880, concentrated his studies on the in­ habitants, making careful notes on their speech and their ways of life. In Vermillionville, now called Lafayette, he found

> The letter is dated October 20, 1881. ‘ In a letter, dated March 22, 1880, from Geo. E. Waring. ' See two letters dated Washington, August 7 and 30, 1880 and signed Walker. They are put together with the Waring-Cable letters in the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans. • There is a letter to his wife, headed Vermillionville, November 21, 1880 (Bikl^, op. cit., 65—66), and in his notebook he writes that he visited Grand Point, a small place in the area, in the middle of Octo­ ber, 1880. 84

the Roman church very inert and the people, “but for practice of one or two virtues absolutely essential to the framework of social order”, “without religion, superstitious and densely ignoranf’J In Iberia, however, he found them to be great churchgoers even in bad weather. Here are a few more of the notes he made in that town: “A baptism always a great merry­ making.” “A child never considers himself out of parents control under 21 and paternal authority still continues very strong even thro’ life. Filial devotion strong.” “Very super­ stitious (the lower class) get many absurd beliefs from African contact.” “Spend Sunday in the larger houses or at country stores, playing poker (their favorite game) with small stakes; but they never cheat.” In Carancro, a small place a few miles north of Lafayette, he wrote: “Malarial fevers bad and general.” “No public vaccination.” “Consanguineous marriages have produced a painful proportion of imbeciles, deformed persons, with one arm, locomotary texia, six toes.” To judge from his notebook Cable made a very thorough study of the Acadians, visiting their homes, inspecting their schools, and attending their weddings. He found much back­ wardness, improvidence, and ignorance. People aged early, malaria and hookworm sapping their strength. Their resent­ ment against the English language prompted them to with­ hold their children from those schools where English was taught. On the whole they regarded all education with suspicion. Cable also took a lively interest in the Acadian dialect, a fact to which many pages in his notebook bear witness. For all that he did not neglect to make notes on the natural history of the Acadian country.® The Census report required much vjifork. In cooperation with Geo. E. Waring, Cable secured detailed information about the present and past condition of the city, and on him alone fell all the work on the historical sketch that was to introduce the report. In consideration of the time devoted to it, it was no remunerative work, except for the deepened knowledge of the history and actual social conditions olf New Orleans that Cable

’ Cable’s notebook. » See Cable’s notebook, 100— 176. 85 gained as a result of it. If he was not an expert on this subject before, he certainly was one after writing the report. Now we cannot expect to find that Cable was very well pleased with all this work, part of which had to be done according to governmental schedules of interrogatories, at a time when he had left his regular office-work in order to follow up his initial successes as a fictionist. It is therefore not surprising to find him complain, in a letter to Mary Hallock Foote,9 of his tedious summer toil to complete the government report. It must have been a consolation to him to learn that Col. Waring found his work “first rate”.io In September, 1881, the closing instalment of the historical sketch was dispatched from New Orleans to Col. Waring in Newport, R. I.,n and later in the same year the report was published in a con­ siderably shortened form under the title History and Present Condition of New Orleans. This publication gives no clue as to the sources Cable used in preparing the report, since the footnote references in the manuscript were left out by the government editor as unne- cessary.i2 The manuscript has, however, been preserved, and from its footnotes it is apparent that Cable had penetrated deeply into his subject. There are references to more than thirty authorities, not including his frequent references to various volumes of De Bow’s Review and to early files of the Picayune. Cable evidently read or consulted not only the most important histories of Louisiana, by Gayarre, Charlevoix, Dumont and Marbois, but also several books of travel, e.g. Harriet Martineau’s Retrospect of Western Travels, Travels through North America by his highness Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and Perrin de Lac’s Voyage dans les Deux Louisianes, as well as official reports, city ordinances, state laws, and similar material. In early summer, 1881, it was arranged that Cable’s census report, in a modified form, was to appear in Scribner’s Monthly as a series of articles.In “My Politics” Cable writes the • Dated November 15, 1881. Bikl£, op. cit., 74. *• A letter from Waring to Cable, dated August 11, 1881. A letter from W aring to Cable, dated Septem ber 19, 1881. ** See a letter from Cable to Marion Baker, dated May 21, 1883. ’* See a letter from Gilder to Cable, dated June 20, 1881. 86 following on this matter: “The editors of Scribner’s Monthly seeing me so deeply immersed, proposed that on finishing for the Government I expand the work into an illustrated history of the Louisiana Creoles. Again I consented, well pleased to write historically of a people whom I was accused of mis­ representing in fiction, and wrote ‘The Creoles of Louisiana.’ ” It was, however, a long time before the articles appeared in the magazine, the first one not being published until the January, .1883, number. The long delay was due partly to Cable’s work on a new novel, partly to the editors’ dissatis­ faction with the articles in the shape they were first presented to them. This matter seems to have caused a minor crisis in Cable’s otherwise pleasant relations with the magazine editors. Johnson and Buel having found four of his articles unsatis­ factory, Cable evidently considered giving up his allegiance to the magazine, and Gilder wrote him to act on his own con­ science and judgement.!^ R. U. Johnson, however, advised him to keep himself exclusively to the Centurij,^^ and so the work on the historical articles was brought to a successful con­ clusion. They appeared in the Century Magazine for January, February, March, April, June, and July, 1883, and in the following year they were collected in book form under the title The Creoles of Louisiana. To illustrate Cable’s history of the Creoles Joseph Pennell was sent to New Orleans, where he arrived in January, 1882. He met Cable in the office of the famous St. Charles Hotel, he tells us in his memoirs,^^ and with him as a guide he explored the old French Quarter. And to his future wife, Elizabeth Robins, he reported: “Cable is just jolly. I was with him from eight o’clock yesterday a.m. till night — This is really living down here —” Cable found Pennell a room in the heart of

A letter from Gilder to Cable, dated April 11, 1882. “ In 1881, after a controversy on the magazine’s right of publishing books, Scribner had sold his stock in it to Roswell Smith and the younger editors. The name of the magazine had then been changed to the Century Magazine. ' ’• Adventures of an Illustrator, quoted by BikU, op. cit., 79—80. Elizabeth Robins Pennell, The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, 54. The letter is dated January 31, 1882. 87

the Vieux Carre, in the old Rue de Saint Pierre, and the latter set out on his work. “Those were delightful days that I spent over my drawings, in courts, on plantations, on the levee, up the bayous in the sunlight,” he writes.^* In April Cable and Pennell hired a schooner on Lake Pon- chartrain, intending to sail up and down the bays and bayous; “but the wind and tide didn’t mean us to, and we spent days among islands inhabited only by distant flamingoes and near pelicans and everlasting alligators.” But Cable sang and told new stories, and to his wife he sent an enthusiastic report: The waves are running and glittering as you have seen them when sitting by my side. But our beautiful yacht bounds over them, not like the great steamers but like a deer on the hills. I know of nothing I have ever experienced in the nature of going that equals this. No land in sight. Only the vast blue sky and the crumpled, silken sea casting back the glorious sunshine. The spray wets the paper as I write. Huge pelicans fly back and forth by threes and fives from one fishing ground to another. One always finds one has forgotten how beautiful is the sea. As I write the low line of the Chandeleurs rises faintly to view. The yacht takes a dazzling wave every now & then as a thorough­ bred horse takes a green hedge.““

Finally, however, they had to give up their enterprise, boarding a steamer, which brought them back to New Orleans.

Some time in 1881 Cable had begun to work on another novel, which was first given the name of Bread but was later entitled Dr. Sevier. The first mention of this work seems to be in a letter from Cable to his wife, dated June 22, 1881,2i in which he tells her that Scribner has been disappointed because he had given his next novel to Osgood’s. This, of course, does not prove that Cable had commenced writing the book; it may only be an indication of his ha\ing con­

“ In Adventures of an Illustrator. Ibid. « Bikle, op. cit., 80. The letter is dated April 18, 1882. »> Ibid., 70. 7 88 templated writing a new novel. Anyhow, by February, 1882, the first draft was ready, for on the 1st of that month Gilder wrote to him:

Now — about “Bread”. To me it is the least good work you have ever done. And yet it has in it some of your best work, and it is free from your greatest fault — namely confusion. " * It seems to me that in the present story (if it is a story) your heart has got the better of your head. The story to me fails of its end — because the motive is too apparent. The reader feels that it is a ‘ put up job”; — that the characters are dragged from misery to misery in order that the writer can preach his theories through them. *** You have turned your mind lately so completely into philanthropical work that for the time being you have lost your sense of art. I do not object to the philanthropy either in life or art, nor in the book — but its expression must — in a work of art — take an artistic form My dear fellow — I care more for your work than for any other writer of fiction, who has written for this magazine. *** For heaven’s sake do not lose, break or injure the vehicle that you possess and that under your direction carries spiritual food no less than intellectual stimulus and wholesome pleasure to so many minds! *** Cannot something be done to give the story a less obviously heart-wringing and “re­ formatory” aspect and end. Why on earth should that woman keep away from her husband during the years of his prosperity, and then — worse than all — why spoil everything by making an infidel of. her — an infidel to the true love of her life! Her marrying the Dr. seems to me under all the circumstanced a most wanton and cruel reflection upon the sympathies she made — P. S. Narcisse is one of your very best creations. The nurse is capital and the Dr. is a fine old fellow *** The following day Gilder seems to have wanted to smoothe over his rather severe criticism, for then he wrote to Cable: I forgot to note in my longer letter two other capital characters; the German baker and his wife. — I am not sure but that you had better let this story stand pretty much as it is — making it, however, if possible, just a little less obviously a story of intention. I doubt if you can get out of it or fully conceal the philanthropic bent. It is a glorious bent, in itself — if the writer does not betray himself! A little later came more consolation from Gilder.22 R. U. Johnson, he wrote, had found the novel “O.K.”, only he had

” In a letter, dated February 20, 1882. 89 wished it to be a little more picturesque. And Gilder himself thought that the opening vista of the war was “just stunning”. On the basis of this criticism Cable started revising his work. In April of the same year the first instalment of the novel was once more with the Century editors, and now it found more favour in the eyes of Gilder. “The first installment is up to the mark, in my judgment,” he wrote to Cable on April 19. “The Apothecary's clerk is one of your most delicious characters! How admirably you draw those different land­ ladies.” And in the autumn Cable reported from New York to his sister Louise that Gilder liked the novel very much.^a As an example of his painstaking method of work it may be mentioned that Cable did not content himself with one revision of Dr. Sevier but made a third draft of the novel. As he was engaged at the same time in many other occupations, it was a long time before this third draft was finished. Only in June, 1883, did Gilder give his opinion of it,^'* and it is not probable that it was ready very long before that time. Two of the principle characters. Dr. Sevier and Richling, he finds elucidated in this third draft, but the heroine, Mary Richling, is still unsatisfactory to him. “Why is it,” he writes, “that she excites no interest in the human heart — at least none in mine?” And he concludes; “With all its fun and charm you must not be disappointed if this story as a whole does not create as pleasant an impression as your others. You have chosen the most painful and sordid theme that exists.” The criticism of the Century editors greatly influenced the final version of Dr. Sevier, a fact that appears from a com­ parative study of the novel as printed and the manuscripts.^® Most important is the removal of the rather artificial happy end which Gilder had severely criticized.^® Instead of letting the heroine, after her husband’s death, marry the doctor, the author makes her devote herself to philanthropical work. In the autumn of 1883 Dr. Sevier, Cable’s second novel, at

*• The letter is dated October 16, 1882. “ His letter is dated June 18, 1883. “ In the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans. ” In his letter of February 1, 1882. 90 last began its course as a serial in the Century Magazine, and about a year later, towards the end of September, 1884, it was published in book form by J. R. Osgood & Co., the Boston publishing firm. In the first six months it ran five editions — 7,000 copies.*'^ « B ikli, op. eit., 129. CHAPTER IX

POSSIBLE LITERARY INFLUENCES ON OLD CREOLE DAYS AND THE GRANDISSIMES

Only one investigation of literary influences on Cable has so far been made, and one that covers only part of the subject. It is Henri Albert Arnaud’s Master’s Thesis L’ilement frangais dans I’oeuvre de George Washington Cable.^ Arnaud begins by criticizing Van Doren’s and F. L. Pattee’s state­ ments concerning this problem. In The American Novell Van Doren says that Cable has obviously read such Frenchmen as Merim^e, Daudet, and Maupassant, “though "with reserva­ tions”. And Pattee, writing about the American short story, says:® Cable was one of the discoveries of Edward King during his tour of the South for Scribner’s Monthly in 1872. It was in New Orleans that he found him working as a humble clerk by day, and by night dreaming over a collection of reading matter as foreign to his work-day world as that which once had engaged another dreaming clerk, Charles Lamb. Among his enthusiasms were the old Spanish and French archives of the city; old relations of the priest- explorers; French novels — Hugo, M^rimee, About; English literature and American — Thackeray, Dickens, Poe, Irving. The composite of all this, plus a unique and evanescent quality which we call personality, was already finding form in sketches and stories which Cable was writing for himself and for the New Orleans papers.

‘ Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1936. (Typewritten.) ' 193. ’ Cambridge History of American Literature, II, 383— 384. 7 * 92

And he goes on to say that Cable’s technique and his atmos­ pheres may have been influenced by the French. Pattee’s statement, it seems, is founded on information from Cable himself. In 1914 Cable, in reply! to a letter from Pattee, wrote the following“Yes, I read some French literature and believe it had its influence on me, though not so much as Dickens, Thackeray, Poe or Irving. My Frenchmen were Hugo, Merim^e and About. I also rea^ many of the old Rela­ tions of the priest explorers and muchj other French matter of early historical value.” Arnaud maintains that both Van Do ren’s and Pattee’s state- ments are made without substanti: 1 evidence. The word “obviously” in Van Doren’s statemen seems to indicate that he has drawn his conclusions from re iding Cable s books and does not build on any concrete infoi-mation. Pattee, on the other hand, gives his readers the impr 3ssion that, by the time Edward King visited New Orleans, Cable had read Hugo, M^rim^e, About, Thackeray, Dickens I oe, and Irving and that these authors had had their influenc e on him. Now, in his letter to Pattee, Cable did not say w len he started to read those authors, and it should furthern ore be noted that that letter was written in 1914 and Cable’s best work in the 1870’s. Arnaud then puts the question which of the French writers mentioned by Van Doren and Pattee, Cable can have read so early that they may have influenced Old Creole Days and The Grandissimes.^ The answer is, he finds, Hugo, Merimee, and About, while Maupassant, whose stories were published later than those early works of Cabl ;’s, may be left out of consideration. He also finds that Frenih books were available in New Orleans at that time and that Cable probably knew enough French to enable him to read them.® The possibility

‘ Bikl^, op. cit., 47. ‘ Although Arnaud does not say so, it is obvious that those are the only books of Cable’s that he is considering. • Arnaud (op. cit., 8) writes that Mrs Oichsner, Cable’s niece, told him that Cable was able to speak and understand French. To bear up this statement there is Cable’s use of French phrases in his books, a Russian professor’s statement that.he heard Cable speak French to a Frenchman (see “My Acquaintance with Cable”, Critic, July 28, 1883), and the fact 93 that Cable may have read translations of, at least the older, French authors is, however, not considered by ArnaudJ If Cable di^ read Hugo, Merimee, and About, in what way could they have influenced him? Arnaud asks.* He thinks that historical novels such as Notre Dame de Paris may have given him “le goiit de refaire vivre le passe, tout en y faisant vivre ses propres idees”. Merimee’s power of observation may have influenced Cable’s technique. About, on the other hand, can, acccording to Arnaud, hardly have found favour with Cable. “II ne fit pas de lui un anti-clerical a coup sur!” And Arnaud concludes: “Voila ce que honnetement nous pouvons envisager comme influence fran^aise!” It is more probable, he thinks, that Cable was influenced by Irving and Poe, the two American authors mentioned by Cable in his letter to Pattee. Now the fact is that Arnaud knew very little about Cable’s reading habits, and we may therefore examine his findings in the light of what we can find out about this matter. We have seen that, far from considering literature immoral. Cable, at an early age, took a lively interest in it. By the early 1870’s he seems to have been, for a young man, fairly well read in English and American literature. To judge from his column in the Picayune he had read such authors as Malory, Bacon, Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, Scott, Tennyson, Swinburne, Longfellow, Whitman, Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, Josh Bil­ lings, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Taine. The reading of Whittier’s poems was “among the most dearly cherished of his boyhood’s recollections”.® He was also an eager student of history and of the Bible. that Cable refers to a large number of works in French in the footnotes of his MS of The History of New Orleans. ’ It seems probable that Cable read Les Misirables in translation, for in his obviously autobiographical novel The Cavalier he writes (pp. 2—3) that he was hungry to be “where Shakespeare was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticised, ‘Les Misirables’ — Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation lent round”. « He does not include Daudet in this question, because he is at fault as to the date of publication of Daudet's first book. • Cable’s own words in speaking to Whittier. See the Boston Herald, November 28, 1883. Quoted here from Arlin Turner’s “Whittier Calls on George W. Cable”, New England Quarterly, XXII, March, 1949. 94

In his evenings at home, writes hik daughter Lucy Cable Bikle.i® Cable would read aloud to his friends or his family, and whether the book was Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur or Tartarin of Tarascon or Cranford jr Edward Lear’s Non­ sense Rhymes, he always infused hi 5 own delight into his audience. He may very well have read all of these books by the time he wrote Old Creole Days and The Grandissimes, for Lear’s A Book of Nonsense appeared n 1846, Gaskell’s Cran- ford in 1853, and Daudet’s Tartarin dk Tarascon in 1869. By the summer of 1875 Cable had read Tourgudneff and Merimee, for on June 22 of that yeai N. Picard, a friend of Cable’s from the Young Men’s Debatins» Society, wrote to him: “Should the fates decree that I shall not return to New Orleans, the one thing I shall regret more than s.ll others, is the pleasant time we spent over Turguenef and Meirimee, with your mother sitting by to lend to the scene that inlefinable : sense of peace and happiness and repose the presen cec of old age, as repre- sented by her, never fails to inspire.” In his letter to Pattee, Cable mentioned two English authors, Thackeray and Dickens, as having influenced him. That those two Englishmen were among Cable’s favourites is confirmed by his daughter, Mary Brewster, whjo w r i t e s “Their [the Cables’] sittingroom would have beejn strangely unhismelike wdthout their sets of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot. They even read aloud from these.” Neither Cable nor his daughter, however, says anything anout when he started to read the works of Dickens and Thackeray, and we have only indications of this. One, according to which Cable read Dickens’s Pickwick Papers in the 860’s, has already been mentioned.*^ Another, the value of w hich is somewhat doubt- ful, suggests that he began reading Dickens and Thackeray rather late in life. In 1915 W. W. Elh worth, one of the editors of the Century, wrote the following in a letter to Cable

« Op. cit., p. XI. Mary Brewster, “George W. Cable”, Congregationalist, December 10, 1925. » See p. 33. I '• The letter is headed New York, September 10, 1915. 9 5

We are publishing a book about American literature, and in it the author naturally has a good deal to say about you. He makes the statement that you had read enormously in your early youth,, — Dickens, Thackeray, Poe, Irving, etc. I have an idea in my head that you told me when you came to New York by steamer from New Orleans for the first time, that you had read on the boat your first volume of either Dickens or Thackeray and that you had not read any boolcs by the other. Am I mistaken?

Cable’s first visit to New York was in 1875. Ellsworth’s letter was written 40 years later, and therefore he majf, of course, easily be mistaken. Cable s article “A Word About Dr. Holland”, published in 1889,1^ gives evidence of his having read Scribner’s Monthly from its first number. Although it is hard to say what he read and what he skipped in it, we may be fairly certain that through it he got to know several of the American local colourists. Through its first three volumes he may also have followed George MacDonald’s Wilfred Cumbermede, and in its fourth and fifth volumes he may have read translations of H. C. Andersen’s fairy-tales. It may be added that I have found evidence from the middle of the 1880’s that he was then an admirer of H. C. Andersen.Hjalmar H. Boyesen was a con­ tributor to Scribner’s Monthly whose work Cable was familiar with at an early date. For writing about him in the Critic, Cable states that “his Ijterary work had secured him the recognition both of critical writers and of the reading world before I had had the pleasure to read them. Later, they delighted me before I could presume to express for them the interest of a fellow author.” It is, of course, impossible to say at what time Cable considered himself to be an author, but

'* Christian Union, Ju ly 25, 1889. In the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans, there is a letter to Cable from a former Danish minister to the United States, A. de Bille, who writes from Copenhagen on February 18, 1885: “When, on April 17th last year, we met in the house of Miss Olive Risley Seward in Washington, with you. Professor Langley and Mrs Fremont you told us that you had taken a strong fancy to Hans Christian Andersen and, on hearing this, Mrs de Bille promised to send you his autograph and some relics connected with our late dear friend.” *' III, 348, August 25, 1883. 96 in any case it cannot have been later than 1879, and in the Boyesen-Cable correspondence of 1878 and 1879 there is evid­ ence of Cable’s having read, at that time, Boyesen’s Falcon- berg.^^ From various quarters Cable received advice upon what he should read in order to improve as a writer, and as this was what he was eager to do, we may be fairly certain that he acted upon at least some of it. On May 7, 1875, Richard Watson Gilder wrote to him; “My artist chum (H. de Kay) otherwise Mrs. R. W. G. says I might recommend those clever Frenchnieri to you for clarity and plot — say About. Tourgueneff is a master worth any artists study. In English Bret Harte — at his best.” About is one of the French authors mentioned by Cable in his letter to Pattee, and it seems highly probable that Cable started reading him after receiving this suggestion from Gilder. Bret Harte and Tourgueneff, as we have seen, wer^ known to Cable before that time. As to Tourgueneff, Cable manifested his admira­ tion for him to a Russian professor who visited him in New Orleans. Writing about this visit, the Russian quotes Cable as having said;i® “Boyesen writes that you know Tourgueneff. How glad I am to see any one who is acquainted with him. He is certainly the greatest of contemporary writers — the first artist, and the most temperate realist. Here we all greatly esteem him.” Robert Underwood Johnson, while; preparing The Grandis- simes for the magazine, repeatedly aiivised Cable to read The

” See Boysen to Cable under dates of November 7, 1878 and August 26, 1879. '* His article is stated, by the Critic of July 28, 1883, where a con­ densed translation of It appeared under the heading “My Acquaintance With Cable”, to have been published in the Viestnik Europii for May, 1883. The article, which will be discussed later in the present work (pp. 102—103), is somewhat questionable! but there is no reason to consider the passage quoted here to be untrue. ’• It may be added that Boyesen also adyised Cable to read Tourgue- neffs stories. “Even if you don't like theih you can’t afford to ignore them ,” he w rote to Cable in a letter of F ebruary 17, 1878. 97

Newcomes. On August 18, 1879, he wrote: “Have you read that splendid scene in the Newcomes where the Col. — a man of the world in the best sense — takes his son Clive away from a coffee house where they are singing ribald songs? Read it. Thackeray helps one to find the gold in the alloy of human nature.” And again, shortly afterwards, in a P. S.;2o “Take 15 minutes to that scene in the Newcomes. How Thackeray understood men I” It does not seem improbable that this was the impulse that made Cable read Thackeray. From this survey we find that the following 'authors are among those that may have influenced Cable in Old Creole Days, the stories of w'hich were written between 1872 and 1875 ;2i Malory, Bacon, Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, Scott, Tenn5'son, Swinburne, Longfellow, Whitman, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whittier, Poe, Josh Billings, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Tourgueneff, Merimee and T a in e .22 Before finishing The Grandissimes he had read Boyesen, and it seems fairly probable that by that time he had also read Dickens, Thac­ keray, George MacDonald, About, and H. C. Andersen. He may have read Edward Lear, E. C. Gaskell, George Eliot, Daudet, Hugo, and Washington Irv in g .23 To return to Arnaud’s thesis; We have found nothing to prove that Cable read Hugo, About, and Irving before writing Old Creole Days and The Grandissimes.^* On the other hand, it seems certain that he was familiar with Poe when writing those books, and there is evidence that he had read Merimee by the summer of 1875, before writing the last of the short stories collected in Old Creole Days. Under these circum-

'• The letter is dated August 26, 1879. “ See pp. 48—54. Here I take it for granted that my conclusions in those pages were correct. In any case only one or two of the stories can have been w ritten before 1872. ” I do not include the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which Cable read as a boy of nine. See “My Politics”. ” It is certain that he read these authors but the difficulty is to say when. “ I want to stress the fact that those are obviously the books with which Arnaud is concerned. 98 stances, only a detailed comparative study,with special reference to style and technique, of Cable’s early books and the works of the authors with which we have found that Cable was or may have been familiar can give us a clue as to which authors really influenced him in his early work. For such a study this chapter may, it is hoped, serve as a basis.

” For studies of that kind see Jane Lundblad, Nathaniel Hawthorne and European Literary Tradition and Lars Ahnebrink, The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction. CHAPTER X

NON-LITERARY SOURCES OF OLD CREOLE DAYS, THE GRANDISSI- MES AND DR. SEVIER

In his letter to F. L. Pattee.i mentioned in the preceding chapter. Cable writes: “I also read many of the old Rela­ tions of the priest explorers and much other French matter of early historical value.” And he adds that he dropped into the writing of romances “because it seemed a pity for the stuff to go so to waste”. By “the stuff” he obviously meant the romantic, or otherwise interesting, material he found during his historical studies. In “My Politics” he informs us that he found the material for “’Tite Poulette” and “Posson Jone’ ” in old newspaper-files in the city archives of New Orleans. Cayetano’s circus, which is the scene of part of the latter story, is not a figment of the author’s imagination,* and even the almost incredible tiger-episode of that- story is founded on an actual incident, a fact for which we have Cable’s own word.3 “Jean-ah Poquelin” is considered by Hearn 2 to have been inspired by the life of an eccentric “Doctor”, named Gravier, but it is impossible to say whether Cable read about this man in old newspapers or had his story by hearsay.*

> B ikli, op. cit., 47— 48. ' Hearn, “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances”, Century, November, 1883. ’ In a letter, dated January 25, 1893, and signed L. L. Farnsworth, Cable is asked whether this episode is founded on reality. On the back of the letter there are the following words written in Cable’s hand: “Actual incident reported by eyewitness entirely credible.” * The only way to find out exactly what incidents inspired Cable seems to be to go through the newspaper files and manuscripts of the New 100

That Cable was not wholly dependent upon the material he found in the archives but also used oral information is shown by an account he has himself given of how he came to write the story of Bras-Coupe.s This is what Cable tells us;® When I was first enjoying the impulse to write stories and had been reading in the colonial history of Louisiana some account of the characteristic traits of various tribes of negroes from which slaves were imported into this country, I came upon an account of a tribe which was distinguished by the untamable self-regard of its men. This led them so frequently to poison themselves fatally or to mutilate themselves, that the importers of slaves were warned against them and cautioned to keep a constant watch upon them to prevent them from doing this. A quaint old French writer upon Santo Domingo offered this warning pointedly and 1 had already picked up hints of it from other writers. My impression is that the tribe was known as the Aradas. In those days I took great pains to talk with old French-speaking negroes, not trusting to the historical correctness of what they told me, but receiving what they said for its value as tradition, superstition or folklore. Talking to one of these — a little old fellow who was porter and cleaner-up in the counting-room where I was bookkeeper and cashier, Wm. C. Black & Co. — he spoke often of Bras-Coupe, led up to it by me after Prof. Alexander Dimitry had given me the “Dirge of Saint Malo.” Saint Malo was a colored insurrectionist slave in New Orleans, who, according to this negro dirge, was captured, tried, convicted and carried to the gallows in a cart in the old-fashioned way once so common. My old darkey informant had heard of Saint Malo but his mind constantly reverted to the far more powerful impressions left by the memory of Bras-Coupe. Bras-Coupe, he said, was one of those Aradas (let us say), — an imported African chief. As such he disdained to work, 'and, true to his tribal pride, he seized a hatchet and struck off his right hand. He was sa-i^ed by prompt surgery and on still finding himself required to woi’k, escaped to the swamp. Here he lived for years, through the negligence of the police, the terror of hunters and woodcutters andj the hero of terror-stories among children and slaves. He was finally captured and, the sup­ position is, executed. Behind all these 'facts I was deeply moved to make a story of them by the very natural revolt of feeling I Orleans archives. This seems to be impracticable, at least for any one person. Interesting discoveries may, however, be made if scholars doing research in these archives keep this object in view, ‘ BikU has printed part of this account (op. cit., 179— 180). The whole account, as dictated by Cable, is in manuscript in the Cable Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans. • Or rather Mary E. Burt, for whom the account was intended. 101 experienced about this time in becoming acquainted with the harsher provisions of the old Black Code of Louisiana. It was not until after I had published “The Grandissimes,” which I was moved to write as an expansion of the Bras-Coupe story, that I heard that a certain well-known Creole family, with one or two members of which I had some acquaintance, confirmed the story of Bras-Coupe. They considered, however, that my version of it was faulty, because I had taken the liberty of saving Bras-Coupe’s arm whole. The fact that he certainly did chop it off seemed to them to be a precious verity of history not to be impiously trifled with, and I believe the insistence upon this point was a conscious tribute to the African’s magnificent courage. The firiit person out­ side of my own family circle w'ho ever read the story of Bras-Coupe was my dear friend and “discoverer,” the late Edward King, who wrote me from San Antonio, Texas, that he had read the manuscript over three evenings in succession and had encountered him in three successive nightmares. This naturally was great encourage­ ment to me, for of course the height of the story-teller’s ambition is to give his readers nightmares.

We learn from this account that Cable “took great pains” to collect material by talks with old French-speaking Negroes. It is probable that material gathered in this way was used by him in other cases than the one he has told us about. Anyhow his quick ear picked up the Negro dialect, with which The Grandissimes is sprinkled. From the same account of Cable’s it also appears that the old Black Code of Louisiana was, if not a source, at least a source of inspiration to him, a fact which is corroborated by “My Politics” where he writes: “In my reading I came to the old Black Code. In sheer indignation I wrote a story which years afterward became the foundation for the episode of Bras-Coupe in ‘The Grandissimes.’ ” What was it in the Black Code that provoked Cable’s indignation? Some historians have found the Black Code rather paternal, and it is true that it contains several provisions for the welfare of the slaves. In its thirty-second paragraph we find, however, what cruel punishment awaited a fugitive slave. A slave who fled and kept away from his owner for a month was to be punished by having his ears cut off and his shoulder marked by a fleur-de-lis, and a slave who fled for the third time was to be executed. According to its thirty-eighth paragraph, enchain­ 102

ment and flagellation of slaves were allowed. It was, however, certainly most of all the thirty-second paragraph that inspired Cable, for in it he found that the treatment accorded to Bras- Coupe according to tradition was in agreement with the law of Bras-Coupe’s time. It is possible that The Grandissimes was also built partly on old historical material. That Cable was on the look-out for such material in 1876 is shown bya letter of his of April 21 of that ye.ar, in which he shows himself interested in purchas­ ing French’s Collection of Louisiana Papers and Poole’s Index to Periodicals.’’ The fact, however, is that in the case of this novel Cable’s source of inspiration was not so much historical events of long ago as the New Orleans of his own time.® In “My Politics” he writes: “It was impossible that a novel writ­ ten by me then should escape being a study of the fierce struggle going on around me, regarded in the light of that past history — those beginnings — which had so differentiated Louisiana civilization from the Anierican scheme of public society. I meant to make ‘The Grandissimes’ as truly a political work as it has ever been called.” These words of Cable’s in combination with the fierce Creole reaction to the novel make us suspect that many of its events and figures are not from the first years of the nineteenth century where the author puts them but from the middle of the 1870’s. As to the events I have ho proof to offer, and so the suspicion must remain a suspicion, but in the case of the characters there is some evidence available. In the Critic of July 28, 1883, there appeared an article entitled “My Acquaintance with Cable”.® An introductory let­ ter shows that it is a condensed translation of an article in the Viestnik Evropii for May of the same year. From a letter of introduction from Boyesen to Cable lo it appears that its

' Bikl^, op. cit., 54. ' * The reader will notice that in this survey I take sources in a wider sense, including not only printed and manuscript sources but also the milieu that was a source of inspiration to Cable. • For a fuller discussion of this article see Kjell Ekstrom, “Cable’s Grandissimes and th e Creoles”, Studia Neophilologica, XXI, 190— 194, 1949. >• Dated New York, May 9, 1882. 103 writer was a Russian professor, named Kowaledski, of the University of Moscow. In the article the Russian tells us of a visit to Cable in New Orleans. Host and guest had gone out to Lake Pontchartrain to bathe. When leaving the beach in the evening, they were surrounded by “a circle of persons, shaking hands in a friendly manner”. When they were once more alone. Cable told his guest their names, observing, “This one served as the type for my Honore Grandissime, and this one is the living George de Granion.” “ This article caused Cable to write a letter to the editors of the Critic,stating that there were many utterances attributed to him by the Russian which he did not remember ever to have spoken. This letter of Cable’s certainly makes the Russian professor’s article somewhat questionable. It seems, however, very prob­ able that, had the description of the meeting with the Creoles on the beach and Cable’s utterances concerning his Creole models been wholly untrue. Cable would have attempted to refute this part of the article, and he does nothing of the sort. There is also other evidence that Cable drew his Creole characters in The Grandissimes from life, and in view of this fact we have no reason to believe the Russian’s description of the episode on the beach to be a fabrication. In the Critic of October 8, 1881, there appeared an article by Charles M. Clay, entitled “George W. Cable”, in which the following paragraph is of interest in this connection: Mr. Cable’s method is peculiarly his own, though he works from models. This I must believe, because I have his word for it. Doubtingly I asked him, “But where did you find Honore Grandis­ sime?” The quick, bright smile answered before the deliberate speech had set the answer in words: “I have known him for years. I met him only last week in Canal Street.” “And Madame Nan- canou?” “Oh, she is the closest I have made — my very best portrait.”

But if we are not already convinced by what Professor Kowaledski and Charles M. Clay tell us, we may read Cable’s own confession written several years later, when he had long before left the turbulent South for the calmer atmosphere of

“ Sic! The character’s name is Georges De Grapion. Published in the Critic of August 25, 1883. 8 104

Massachusetts. This is what he writes in “After-Thoughts of a Story-Teller”, an article published in the North American Review for January, 1894:

In The Grandissim.es every prominent character is drawn from a model — including Frowenfeld — except Clotilde, who, I think, any reader will say, is both more real and more attractive than the apothecary. Aurore’s model was at least as beautiful and charming as she is portrayed, and in the same ways. I was once her next-door neighbor. A very ugly old line fence between us had either to be repaired or replaced, and I suggested a low, invisible lawn fence. She sweetly bade me suit my caprice entirely; but the new fence was hardly in place before she erected, close against it, another, of feather-edged, hard pine boards, seven, feet high.**

In “Posson Jone’” and Madame Delphine there are also characters drawn from life, Cable tells us in the same article. My “Posson Jone’ ” (Parson Jones) is made entirely without a model, while his friend Jules St. Ange is^ made from two, one for his moral theories and one for his sunny presence. In Madame Delphine, only her daughter, not she, nor Pere Jerome nor any other character, is drawn with reference to a living model.

However, Cable stresses the fact that his characters are portraits, not photographic copies: Of course, the story-teller may find and use living models and will be grateful whenever fortune brings them to him; but when she does not, he has the memory of countless disembodied traits and whims, and, better still, he has himself. For let him find ever so complete a model, he can never make that model live again on the page of fiction by merely reporting him or her. He cannot, success­ fully, paste photographs into a novelJ Whatever richness, or sterility, baseness, beauty, or grotesqueness, of mind or soul, the exigencies of his story require him to portray, he is likely — he is bound — to find somewhere in himself, at last his own best model;

To know the names of Cable’s models is, of course, a matter of purely local interest, but in order to prove that people recognized, or believed themselves to recognize, the figures of the novel, we may quote Arnaud who w r i t e s “Honor^

It Bay be adtel that, in a letter, dated Jaly 30, 1S81, to his consin Mary, Cable deaied that the notorions Marie Laveaa was bis model for Palmyre in The Granditaimes or for any other character of his creation. » Op. cit., 23—24. 105

Grandissime serait, parait-il selon les dires d’une personne qui m’a demande de passer son nom sous silence, un Creole d’origine Alsacienne, nomme Adolphe Schabo.” However, it was not only the inhabitants of New Orleans that were a source of inspiration to Cable in his early creations but the city itself, in particular the Vieux Carre. This quarter, the oldest part of the city, with its beautiful Latin architec­ ture is, of course, a gold-mine to an artist, but before Cable nobody had thought about it as such. He liked its colourful houses and the gay attire of its inhabitants, he wrote many years later,i5 and anyone who reads Old Creole Days or Madame Delphine will notice, in his artistic description of the old houses, his deep admiration for them. It is significant that Madame Delphine and four of the seven short stories of Old Creole Days begin with descriptions of houses in the Vieux Carre, veritable pastels, as Lafcadio Hearn called them.>« These pastels are painted after models, most of which can still be sought out by the visitor to New Orleans.i^ The main source of D r. S evier was a true story which Cable was told by a friend of his. On this matter he writes the following in “My Politics”: “I was still engaged upon ‘The Creoles of Louisiana’ when I was invited to write another novel of the same length — no other feature was ever con­ ditioned — as ‘The Grandissimes.’ I began to write ‘Dr. Sevier.’ An experience told me by Dr. E. Warren Brickell, of New Orleans, had moved me to write the story.” More details on this matter are given by the C ritic of March 28, 1885, which quotes from an article in the Milwaukee Sentinel. During a visit to Milwaukee, it appears. Cable was asked by a journalist to tell something about the writing and conception of Dr. Sevier. The principal characters and the main incidents of the novel were true, Cable told the reporter. One afternoon, as he was passing the office of his family physician, he had been called into that gentleman’s office. The doctor

“ In “New Orleans Revisited”, Book-News Monthly, April, 1909. *• In “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances”, Century, November, 1883. ” And his search will be easy for any New Orleans guidebook will direct him there. Probably the best guide is, however, Lafcadio Hearn’s article “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances”. 106 had said that he wanted to tell Cable a story, and heedless of Cable’s protest that he was busy, the doctor had related the story of the two people who are called John and Mary Rich- ling in the novel. Cable had been deeply affected by the account of their trials, and as soon as possible he had written out the plain story. Later he had read the story to his father- in-law, who had been moved to tears by it, and on the strength of this proof of the story’s appeal Cable had written the novel. In brief. Cable went on to say, the story was this: John Richling (I do not know his real name, for he never revealed it) had married a dainty, sweet, pretty little woman in Milwaukee. He was from Kentucky. They appeared in New Orleans, and that is where Dr. Sevier first saw them. He was called to attend the young wife. He helped her through several sieges of illness. Her husband was searching for a position, and all this time the Doctor saw them growing poorer and poorer, till finally Mary was found by the Doctor in the Charity Hospital. Debtors had sold the bed from under her, and this was all that was left for her. The Doctor asked if her husband had failed in his duty to her, but she replied, “No, he could not do so.” Shortly afterward John became an inmate of the hospital and remained there for a few weeks. On his recovery, Mary, by the Doctor’s advice, was sent to her mother, here in Milwaukee. The Doctor watched over John till he finally got a place with a baker named Rich, on Benjamin Street. Here he proved of immense value to his employer, who died, leaving him in charge. John finally sickened and came into the Doctor’s hands again. He wanted to send for Mary, but the Doctor dissuaded him. A daughter was born to Mary in Milwaukee and John, as he lay dying, handed a picture of his daughter to the Doctor, saying, “This is my baby, whom I have never seen. Mary’s picture I do not need, as I have it always in my heart.” Thus he died, refusing always to tell his name, is such a revelation would bring reproach on his family, who had failed to treat him as they should. Now, somewhere up here are this little woman and daughter, if they are not dead? They are as dear to me as if they were my own children.,Now, as I talk |of them my heart rises in my throat and tears come unbidden to^ my eyes. Mary would be about forty years old, and I am hoping always that my book or some notice may come to her eyes that will help to reveal her to me.

How closely the author followed tliis story in his work will easily be seen by any reader of Dr. Sevier. In the Cable Collection, New Orleans, there is the following unsigned letter. 107

Grand Central Hotel New York, 1881 Tell Cable I cant give exact date. — It was in the fall of 1856. ■— Perhaps he had better use another name than Ritchie, as the wife may be alive. A very important point I think I forgot to give was the absolute and untiring attention given the sick stranger (in her first illness) by the quadroons and mulattresses who • kept the house, on the outside of which hung from the gallery the sign — “Chambres a louer” * * *

Below the text there are these words written in Cable’s hand: “This is from Dr. D. Warren Brickell,'® the original of Doctor Sevier. G. W. Cable.” Dr Brickell, as we see, was not only the source of the story that served as the basis of the novel, but was also the model of one if its characters. Doctor Sevier. When, on Gilder’s criticism. Cable changed the end of the novel Dr. Sevier, letting the widow devote herself to philan­ thropic work instead of making her marry the doctor, it is possible that he got a suggestion from the work of a New Orleans philanthropist, Margaret Haughery, to whom his attention was drawn exactly in 1882, the year in which the change in thp plot of the novel was made. In that year he received a letter from a woman who proposed that he should write an article about “Margaret, the baker”, who had recently died. Margaret was a woman who had come from Baltimore to New Orleans with her husband. The latter fell ill and died in Ireland. Left alone, with little money and no education, Margaret devoted herself to philanthropic work, particularly among orphans, a business-man being her advisor. Soon the whole town honoured her. Cable’s article about Margaret was written only after Dr. Sevier was finished,20 but as the author, according to his own words in the article, knew Margaret for many years, it seems very likely that the letter mentioned above gave him the impulse to make a philanthro-

*• In “My Politics” Cable gives his name as E. Warren Brickell. “ Fanny L. Armstrong, of New Orleans. *• It is dated Simsbury, August 15, 1884, and published in the Christian Union of Ja n u ary 1, 1885. 108 pist of the widow Mary Richling, with Dr Sevier as her advisor. Anyhow, the parallels are striking. As in The Grandissimes, Cable drew some of his characters in his second novel from life. We have already seen that Dr Sevier himself was drawn with a friend of the author’s as a model. In “After-thoughts of a Story-teller” 21 Cable tells us that this friend of his was a man of picturesque idiosyncracies and the partner of the physician who had stimulated the writing of his first novel. In the same article he writes: “In Doctor Sevier, Narcisse is partly from a model; closely as to his graces, beauty, and philosophy; but as to his moral short­ comings and sinuosities he is drawn from — ahem! — the author himself.” This statement is borne out and added to by W. S. Kennedy in an article entitled “The New Orleans of George W. Cable”.*^ He writes that he has learned from Cable’s mother that Narcisse “is drawn from the life in every essential particular except the borrowing propensity; the original hav­ ing been a Creole in her son's office.” An obvious source of inspiration to Cable in Dr. Sevier was the philanthropic work mentioned by Gilder in his letter of February 1, 1882.23 W e have seen how Cable’s interest in the political and social conditions of New Orleans had been roused in the early 1870’s when he served as a correspondent to the Picayune. During the work on the Census Report he got a still better insight into these conditions. About that time — in the spring or summer of 1881 — his attention was drawn to the city’s prison system by the story that Dr Brickell told him; for one item in this story was the brutal treatment of a young man in the Calaboose, the old Parish Prison.^s He was pressed into Grand Jury service, was made secretary of the jury and made a careful tour and report of the city’s

'■ North American Review, Jan u ary , 1894.- “ Literary World, Ja n u ary 24, 1885. « See p. 88. “ In his letter of November 15, 1881, to Mary Hallock Foote, quoted below. Cable writes of long efforts for the reform of prisons and asylums; and in reply to a request for information upon this matter he got a letter from the State Charities Aid Association, headed New York, Sep­ tem ber 22, 1881. “ “My Politics”. 109 charities and corrections. Then he became fired with the ambition to serve his native town by establishing a prison and asylum reform. He gathered into an executive board a small number of the leading men in New Orleans, taking himself the unpaid office of secretary and beginning at once an energe­ tic newspaper crusade against the most conspicuous evils. Some of their efforts succeeded, others were defeated by “a ring of sheriffs, deputies and their confederates, whose poc­ kets were directly involved”.About these opponents and his unsuccessful wrestling with them Cable writes in a letter of November 15, 1881, to Mary Hallock Foote: “I have had a trying time — not of afflictions, but of sad vexations and disappointments — and have not been fit for writing letters. I do not intend to burden you with an account of *** my long efforts, and struggle with a set of ward politicians, in a project for the amelioration & reform of our public prisons and asylums, or of my complete discomfiture (at least for the time being) only yesterday.” Thus we see that at the same tiriie as he was working on Dr. Sevier, Cable was involved in a project for the reform of the local prisons and asylums. In an author such as Cable, with his keen sense of the duty of the citizen to serve in every way the community to which he belongs, it was inevitable that a novel produced under these circumstances should be a

" Ibid. There Cable does not mention in which newspaper his articles on this matter were published, but it seems to have been in the Tim es- Democrat, for from that newspaper Cable received the following letter:

The Times-Democrat New Orleans Decbr 16th 1881. D ear Sir: The Times-Democrat desires to secure your services in the interest of the reform of the public correctional and penal institu­ tions and charities of our City and State, and also in the matter of the suppression of crime. Can you give the Times-Democrat the sole benefit of any and all of your researches, investigations and plans connected therewith and would you be willing to accept the position of accredited agent and representative, and act as such, of this journal? *** E. W1 Burke Manager. 110 reflection of the practical work in progress. This was both an asset and a liability. The rather thin story on which Cable based his novel needed justification for being told. The mission Cable gave the novel provided it with such justification. On the other hand, the artistic value of the book suffered by its being too obviously a story of intention. CHAPTER XI

CABLE’S TREATMENT OF THE CREOLES IN HIS EARLY FICTION ^

In The Creoles of Louisiana^ Cable writes: What is a Creole? Even in Louisiana the question would be variously answered. The title did not here first belong to the descendants of Spanish, but of French settlers. But such a meaning implied a certain excellence of origin, and so came early to include any native, of French or Spanish descent by either parent, whose non-alliance with the slave race entitled him to social rank. Later, the term was adopted by — not conceded to — the natives of mixed blood, and is still so used among themselves. *** Besides French and Spanish, there are even, for convenience of speech, “colored” Creoles; but there are no Italian, or Sicilian, nor any English, Scotch, Irish, or “Yankee” Creoles, unless of parentage married into, and themselves thoroughly proselyted in. Creole society. Neither Spanish nor American domination has taken from the Creoles their French vernacular. This, also, is part of their title; and, in fine, there seems to be no more serviceable definition of the Creoles of Louisiana than this: that they are the Frenchspeaking, native portion of the ruling class. In The Creoles of History and the Creoles of Romance,^ Charles Gayarre, in giving a definition of the word Creole, explains how it came to be applied to Negroes. *** according to the definitions given by the dictionaries of the French and Spanish Academies, which, as to language, are as much > I.e. Old Creole Dags, The Grandissimes, Madame Delphine, and Dr. Seoier. ' 41—42. • A lecture delivered at Tulane University, New Orleans. Published as a pamphlet, of which there is a copy in the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, New Orleans. 112 of final authority as the Supreme Court of the United States in matters of law, creole means the issue of European parents in Spanish or French colonies. It was first invented by the Spaniards to distinguish their child­ ren, natives of their conquered colonial possessions, from the original natives. " * Therefore to be a criollo was to possess a sort of title of honor — a title which could only be the birtjiright of the superior white race. This word, by an easy transition becoming creole, from the verb creer, was adopted by the French for the same purpose — that is, to mean of signify a white human being created in their colonics of Africa and America — *“ The word creole, in the course of time, was so extended as to apply, not merely to children born of European parents, but also to animals, vegetables and fruits, and to everything produced or manufactured in Louisiana. There were creole horses, creole cattle, creole eggs, creole corn, creole cottonade, etc. The negroes born within her limits were creoles to distinguish them from the im­ ported Africans, and from those who, long after, were brought from the United States. It is impossible to comprehend how so many intelligent people should have so completely reversed the meaning of the word creole.

Now, in view of the facts that, according to Cable, the natives of mixed blood adopted the term of Creole, and, according to Gayarre, Negroes born in Louisiana were called Creoles, I do not find it impossible to comprehend, as Gayarre did, how people got a confused idea of what a Creole was. However, before trying to form an opinion of our own, let us consult a couple of modern encyclopaedias on the subject. ‘ British Universities Encyclopsedia tells us that Creole is a term applied, especially in the former Spanish, French, and Portuguese colonies of America, Africa, and the East Indies, to natives of pure European blood (saiigre azul), distinguished from immigrants themselves born in Europe, and from the offspring of mixed blood, as mulattoes, quadroons, Eurasians and the like. And Encyclopsedia Britannica * writes: Creole, a word used originally (16th cpntury) to denote persons born in the West Indies of Spanish parents, as distinguished from immigrants direct from Spain, aboriginals, negroes or mulattos (from the Fr. form of criollo, a West-Indian corruption of Span. criadillo, cognate with Lat. creare, to create). It is' now used of

‘ 1947. 113 descendants of non-aboriginal races born and settled in the West Indies, in various parts of the American mainland and in Mauritius, Reunion and some other places colonized by Spain, Portugal, France, or (in the case of the West Indies) by England. In a similar sense the name is used of animals and plants. The use of the word by some writers as necessarily implying a person of mixed blood is totally erroneous; in itself “creole” has no distinc­ tion of colour; a creole may be a person of European, negro or mixed extraction — or even a horse. Local variations occur in the use of the word as applied to people. In the West Indies it designates the descendants of any European race; in the United States the French-sp6aking native portion of the white race in Louisiana,, whether of French or Spanish origin. The French Canadians are never termed creoles. *" In all the countries named, when a non-white creole is indi­ cated the word negro is added.

Thus all the authorities quoted agree on the fact that Creole was originally used only of white people. Creoles were, in Louisiana, the descendants of Spanish or French immigrants. Later the term was either adopted by coloured people (accord­ ing to Cable) or given to them (according to Gayarre). The reason why people of mixed blood adopted the term may have been the fact that some of them must have been descendants of Creoles. Under the circumstances, as has been pointed out, it is easy to see how the confusion in the use of the term arose. Many people got the notion that a Creole was necessarily a person of mixed blood. This development was, of course, very embarrassing to the “real” Creoles, i.e. the white descen­ dants of French and Spanish immigrants, who took an enormous pride in their ancestors and their white blood. The more they lost of their leading position in New Orleans society, the more ardently they stood up for the purity of their blood. And, as we shall see. Cable did not always, in his fiction, draw a sharp line between white Creoles and “Creoles” of mixed blood. In Cable’s earliest writings, the contributions to the Pi­ cayune, there is no trace of any animosity towards the Creoles. Arlin Turner, in “George W. Cable’s Literary Apprentice­ ship”,s writes:

* Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXIV,, Jan u ary , 1941. 8 114

Just as his attitude toward the Negro and toward the North appears normal for the Deep South in the early 1870’s, similarly there is no indication of anything but friendliness toward the Creoles and some understanding of their life and culture. Of course, he could not be expected to attack the Creole people in his column, whatever his views, but the evidence is overwhelming that he was hardly aware of them as a distinct race and that his attacks on social abuses were directed at no group. His thrusts at dances and plays minced no words, for the influence of his strict upbringing and his training in the Presbyterian Church was so strong that he lost his balance in thinking of “those profoundly silly stage tricks and worse spectacular displays of the day” and the “stupid hops.” But such protests, like those against intemperance and illiteracy, are no more than the pleas of a reforming citizen on a crusade against whatever he sees in need of remedy.

In the short stories of Old Creole Days there is, however, evidence not only of Cable’s awareness of the Creoles as a distinct racial group, but also of a certain predilection of his for making satirical thrusts at them. Let us first go through these stories in the order they were probably written and see what we can find out from them about Cable’s attitude towards the Creoles. ’Sieur George, in the story of the same name, is an eccentric and a gambler, a Creole of a type with whom the better-class Creoles may not have liked to be associated. He lives in a house, “where passably good-looking women appear and dis­ appear, clad in cotton gowns, watering little outside shelves of flowers and cacti, or hanging canaries’ cages. Their hus­ bands are keepers in wine-warehouses, rent-collectors for the agents of old Frenchmen who have been laid up to dry in Paris, custom-house supernumeraries and court-clerks’ depu­ ties (for your second-rate Creole is fa great seeker for little offices).” ® “The landlord is one Kookoo, an ancient Creole of doubtful purity of blood [s/c], who in his landlordly old age takes all suggestions of repairs as personal insults.” He has grown “old and wrinkled and browi, a sort of periodically animate mummy, in the business.”!’ And he has “limited powers of conjecture”.® One day, when ’Sieur George steps • Old Creole Days, 248. ’ Ibid., 248. • Ibid., 249. 115 out of the house in full regimentals, the Creole neighbours rush bareheaded into the street. “What to do or say or think they do not know; they are at their wits’ ends, and therefore well-nigh happy.” » Later, when Kookoo heard that his tenant has a treasure hidden in his room, he “felt a Creole’s anger” that “a tenant should be the holder of wealth while his landlord suffered poverty.” And so, despite the fact that he W'as “intensely a coward” and “fearfully impressed with the extra-hazardous risks of dishonesty”, he decided, to find out about the treasure.io In “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” the principal character is the owner of the plantation, a Creole named Jean Albert Henri Joseph De Charleu-Marot. In a way he is an admirable man, “a hoary-headed patriarch”. “His step was firm, his form erect, his intellect strong and clear, his countenance classic, serene, dignified, commanding, his manners courtly, his voice musical, — fascinating.” However, he “had had his vices, — all his life; but had borne them, as his race do, with a serenity of conscience and a cleanness of mouth that left no outward blemish on the surface of the gentleman. He had gambled in Royal Street, drunk hard in Orleans Street, run his adversary through in the duelling-ground at Slaughter­ house Point, and danced and quarrelled at the St. Philippe- street-theatre quadroon balls. Even now, with all his courtesy and bounty, and a hospitality which seemed to be entertaining angels, he was bitter-proud and penurious, and deep down in his hard-finished heart loved nothing but himself, his name, and his motherless children.” ^ Those children, seven daugh­ ters, were charming creatures, but they “would call upon Heaven with French irreverence”,12 a practice which of course did not find favour with a strict Presbyterian such as Cable was. The proud De Charleu had a distant relative with Indian blood in his veins, the founder of the Louisiana branch of the family having been married to a Choctaw woman before

• Ibid., 251. >• Ibid., 265. ” Ibid., 123— 124. Ibid., 132. 116 marrying, “in a fit of forgetfulness”, a French gentlewoman. This relative, nicknamed Injin Charlie, was not completely neglected by De Charleu. For, “One thing I never knew a Creole to do. He will not utterly go back on the ties of blood, no matter what sort of knots those ties may be. For one reason, he is never ashamed of his or his father’s sins; and for another, — he will tell you — he is ‘all heart!’ ” Now the ambition of De Charleu was to buy the plain house where “Injin Charlie” lived to build on its site a mansion, which was to be the finest in the State. “Men should never pass it, but they should say — ‘the palace of the De Charleus; a family of grand descent, a people of elegance and bounty, a line as old as France, a fine old man, and seven daughters as beautiful as happy; whoever dare attempt to marry there must leave his own name behind him!’”i^ But “Injin Charlie” refused to sell his house, and De Charleu got more and more dejected. “Here was a man, rich without the care of riches, free from any real trouble, happiness as native to his house as perfume to his garden, deliberately, as it were with premedi­ tated malice, taking joy by the shoulder and bidding her be gone to town, whither he might easily have followed, only that the very same ancestral nonsense that kept Injin Charlie from selling the old place for twice its value prevented him from choosing any other spot for a city home.” When the plantation house with the seven “goddesses” glides out into the Mississippi and disappears, this catastrophe is blamed by Cable, it seems, as much on the exaggerated family pride of De Charleu as on the eroding work of the river. In “’Tite Poulette” Cable contrasts the low moral standard of the Creole manager of the Salle de Conde, where the quadroon balls were held, with the m6ral and physical courage of Kristian Koppig, a young Dutchman (or was he a German? — “the distinction was too fine fot Creole haste and dis­ relish” ).i« The ugly character of the^ Creole is revealed when he attacks and stabs Kristian KopJ)ig. In this story Cable

•> Ibid., 124. ■* Ibid., 126. » Ibid., 135. >• Ibid., 213. 117 speaks of “the loose New Orleans morals of over fifty years ago” and tells of the quadroon balls as visited by many noble gentlemen, colonels, generals, city councilmen and officers from the Government H ouse.H e also makes a thrust at the education of young ladies. “Living vv^as hard work; and, as Madame John had been brought up tenderly, and had done what she could to rear her daughter in the same mistaken way, with, of course, no more education than the ladies in society got, they knew nothing beyond a little music and embroidery.” ** In “Posson Jone ” Cable again contrasts a Creole and a non-Creble, this time a West-Floridian parson. Jules St.-Ange, the Creole, is a young man of twenty-one, who, shuddering at the thought of work, decides to “try some games of con­ fidence”.H e meets the parson, and, determined to make him his victim he brings him to a gambling-den. The next morning he is, however, remorseful and eager to give the parson the same amount of money that he had lost. The Creole’s discussion of religion with the parson,2o in which the former’s ethics are revealed (“What a man thing is right, is right; ’tis all ’abit.”), may easily be constructed as a satirical criticism of Catholicism, the creed to which all Creoles adhered. Jules St.-Ange, with his dislike for work, his gambling, his untruthfulness and light attitude towards religion, must, of course, have been an eyesore to the Creoles,2i but to most other people, I think, he appears as, on the whole, a rather likeable character. The story about “Jean-ah Poquelin” is laid in the first decade of the l&th century, “when the newly established American Government was the most hateful thing in Louisiana — when the Creoles were still kicking at such vile innovations as the trial by jury, American dances, anti-smuggling laws, and the printing of the Governor’s proclamation in English ” .22

•’ Ibid., 217. Ibid., 218. '• Ibid., 149. « Ibid., 157— 159. " Probably very few of them, however, read the story. « Ibid., 179. 118

It is hardly necessary to point out the satirical undertone of this sentence. Jean Marie Poquelin is “a bold, frank, im­ petuous, chivalric adventurer”, a rather pleasant character, who, however, gambled his slaves away, thus making the estate fall into decay. Now he had recourse to smuggling and the African slave-trade. “What harm could he see in it? The whole people said it w’as ^'itally necessary, and to minister to a vital public necessity, — good enough, certainly, and so he laid up many a doubloon, that made him none the worse in the public regard.” Thus, for his smuggling and slave-trade, the whole society of that time is blamed by Cable. When Jean Poquelin’s younger brother disappeared, a suspicion fell upon him and everybody shunned him as well as his house. “To the Creoles — to the incoming lower class of superstitious Germans, Irish, Sicilians, and others — he became an omen and embodiment of public and private ill-fortune. Upon him all the vagaries of their superstitions gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputed to his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, he had bewitched her. Did a child stray off for an hour, the mother shivered with the apprehen­ sion that Jean Poquelin had offered him to strange gods." The absurdness of these superstitions is underlined by the end of- the story. Jean Poquelin dies and at his bier appears the missing brother, a leper. And the author’s voice is heard through that of Mr White. “Gentlemen,” said little White, “here come the last remains of ■lean Marie Poquelin, a better man, I’m afraid, with all his sins, — yes a better — a kinder man to his blood — a man of more self- forgetful goodness — than all of you put together will ever dare to be.” “

In “Madame Delicieuse” Cable attributes to his Creole cha­ racters such properties as a slight regard for learning, hastiness to quarrel, and a light attitude towards truth. Madame Deli­ cieuse is a prepossessing woman, but she is sly and she has no scruples against being untruthfill to gain her ends. Her

» Ibid., 181. “ Ibid., 182. « Ibid.. 192. « Ibid., 208. 119

principles are not “constructed in the austere Anglo-Saxon style, exactly (what need, with the lattice of the Confessional not a stone’s-throw off?).” She has charms of intellect, but she is not such a sinner against time and place as to be an “educated woman”. Her audaciousness is proved by her driv­ ing out into the American suburbs, learning English, and talking national politics, all things that were not considered comme-il-faut for Creole women in the New Orleans of the early 19th century. She is in love with Dr Mossy, a physician honoured in Europe for his research. He is learned but has “apparently no idea of how to slfoio himself to his social profit, — two features much more smiled at than respected, not to say admired, by a people remote from the seats of learning, and spending most of their esteem upon animal heroisms and exterior display.” Her love for the physician drives Madame Delicieuse to criticize her own people when speaking to his father. General Villivicencio. She says; “Here in Royal Street, in New Orleans, where we people know nothing and care nothing but for meat, drink, and pleasure, he was only Dr. Mossy, who gave pills.” General Villivicencio is a towering, martial-looking old gentleman, possessing gracious pomp, but rather ridiculous in his stubborn and unreasoning conservatism. He is, in 1830,*® twenty-seven years after the Louisiana Purchase, the head of “a faithful few who had not bowed the knee to any abomina­ tion of the Americains, nor sworn deceitfully to any species of compromise”. These gentlemen, “heroically unconscious of their feebleness”, decide “to place before the people the name of General Hercule Mossy de Villivicencio” at the forthcoming election.3i This decision is soon discussed all over the city. “The young gentlemen who stood about the doors of the so- called ‘coffee-houses’ talked with a frantic energy alarming to any stranger, and just when you would have expected to

« Ibid., 273. “ Ibid., 272. “ Ibid., 298. ” This is the date given this story by Cable in a letter to Scribner, Armstrong & Co. Bikld, op. cit., 58. « Old Creole Dags, 277— 278. 9 120 see them jump and bite large mouthfuls out of each other’s face, they would turn and enter the door, talking on in the same furious manner, and, walking up to the bar, click their glasses to the success of the Villivicencio ticket. Sundry swarthy and wrinkled remnants of an earlier generation were still more enthusiastic. There was to be a happy renaissance; a purging out of Yankee ideas; a blessed home-coming of those good old Bourbon morals and manners which Yankee notions had expatriated. In the cheerfulness of their anticipations they even went the length of throwing their feet high in air, thus indicating how the Villivicencio ticket was going to give ‘doze Americains’ the kick under the nose.” When an attack is launched on the Villivicencio ticket in a newspaper, some of its supporters hasten to inform the General about it. The old officer invites the first arrival into his bedroom. “With a short and strictly profane harangue the visitor produced the offensive newspaper, and was about to begin reading, when one of those loud nasal blasts, so peculiar to the Gaul, resounded at the gate, and another ‘not respons­ ible’ entered, more excited, if possible, than the first. Several minutes were spent in exchanging fierce sentiments and slap­ ping the palm of the left hand rapidly with the back of the right.” 33 “Finally, Alphonse read the article. Little by little the incensed gentlemen gave it a hearing, now two words and now three, interrupting it to rip out long, rasping maledictions, and wag their forefingers at each otlher as they strode fero­ ciously about the apartment. As Alphonse reached the close, and dashed the paper to the floor, the whole quartet, in terrific unison, cried for the blood of the editor.” Many years earlier the General had disowned his son. Dr Mossy, because he refused to go to P aris to enter the French army. But now, through the machin ations of Madame Deli- cieuse, he is again on speaking terms with him, and he decides that his son shall make the villain “pay for his impudence with blood”.*5 The doctor writes the editor of the newspaper

« Ibid., 284— 285. “ Ibid., 289— 290. Ibid., 290. « Ibid., 291. 121 a letter in English, “a vile tongue” according to his father. But the General is not satisfied with the letter. “’Tis all nonsent!” cried the General, bursting into English. “Hall you ’ave to say is: "Sieur Editeurs! I want you s’all give de neni of de indignan’ scoundrel who meek some lies on you’ paper about men pere et ses amis!” ’*

Dr Mossy refuses to fight, and so the General asks him if he is afraid. “Yes,” rang out the Doctor, ‘ afraid; afraid! God forbid that I should not be afraid. But I will tell you what I do not fear — I do not fear to call your affairs of honor — murder!”

In “Cafe des Exiles” the reader meets a company of Spanish Creoles, refugees from the West Indies. One is Martinez of San Domingo, “yellow as a canary”, whose whole family had been massacred; “he alone was left to tell the tale, and told it often, with that strange, infantile insensibility to the solemnity of his bereavement so peculiar to Latin people.” Another is Manuel Mazaro, who, has a dark, girlish face and hands of a woman, and whose blood is not unmixed with Indian.39 And there is Pedro, “a short, compact man of thoroughly mixed blood”, “whose surname no on knew”,*® and many other exiles. Planning soiiie sort of buccaneering expedition, they held secret meetings in the cafe; “it was quiet; those Spanish Creoles, however they may afterward cackle, like to lay their plans noiselessly, like a hen in a barn.” “The shutters of doors and windows were closed and the chinks stopped with cotton; some people are so jealous of observation.” Mazaro, however, disclosed the plan to the police, and it had to be given up. But shortly afterwards the traitor’s body was found in a canal.

•• Ibid., 293. ” Ibid., 294. « Ibid., 87. « Ibid., 87—89. *• Ibid., Ill—112. Cable undoubtedly regarded these two men as Creoles. He calls the whole crowd “those Spanish Creoles” {ibid., 94), and their leader addresses them “Creoles, countrymen” (ibid., 112). ” Ibid., 94. « Ibid.. 95. 122

As in two or three of the other stories the most pleasing Creole type in “Caf^ des Exiles” is a woman, Pauline, the daughter of the owner. She was seldom seen, but sometimes her father would call her to mix a lemonade for the guests. “Then the neighbors over the way, sitting about their doors, would by and by softly say, ‘See, see! there is Pauline!* and all the exiles would rise from their rocking-chairs, take off their hats and stand as men stand in church, while Pauline came out like the moon from a cloud, descended the three steps of the caf^ door, and stood with waiter and glass, a new Rebecca with her pitcher, before the swarthy wanderer.” Thus we see that even in Old Creole Days there were bitter pills for the Creoles^* to swallow. There are many thrusts against their character, education, and civilization; and, worst of all, there are a few Creole characters of mixed blood. How­ ever, there are also attractive features in the picture Cable paints of the Creoles in these stories. The Creole women in them are, on the whole, pleasing, and the moral courage of Dr Mossy and the family loyalty of Jean Poquelin must awake the reader’s sympathy and admiration. On the whole, however, the early short stories were rather harmless in their treatment of the Creoles compared to The Grandissimes. This novel is, as Boyesen put it,*s a ^Kultur- roman”, in which two struggling forces of opposing civiliza­ tions crystalize, the Catholic, Latin civilization of the Creoles and the non-Catholic civilization of the “Yankees”; and it is not hard to find out of the book ^^ich civilization Cable considered as the higher. Towards the| end of the novel «« he even states his opinion outright; the old Spanish-colonial ferocity, he writes, was gradually absorbed, .“under the gentler influences of a higher civilization”, by the growth of better traits. I This first novel of Cable’s is also a criticism of slavery and, indirectly, of its successor, the caste System. The Creoles, of

« Ibid., 92— 93. When nothing else is indicated, this term is nsed, in this book, for the white descendant# of French and Spanish immigrants. « B ikl6, op. cit., 56. 123

course, had to take part of the blame for the social system thus condemned; but as this is a problem connected with the whole white population of the South, I will save it for a later chapter. The story opens with a masked ball given in the Theatre St. Philippe in September, 1803; “the little Creole capital’s proudest and best were offering up the first cool night of the languidly departing summer to the divine Terpsichore. For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of lea>ang when September rises to go. It was like hustling her out, it is true, to give a select bal masqu6 at such a very early — such an amusingly early date; but it was fitting that something should be done for the sick and the destitute; and why not this? Everybody knows the Lord loveth a cheerful giver.” Thus even the very first paragraph of the book contains an ironical thrust at the Creoles. The first character the reader meets at this ball is Agricola F u s i l i e r , an old Creole, who refuses to believe in the Loui­ siana Purchase. “Not that he believed it had been done; for, look you, how could it be? The pretended treaty contained, for instance, no provision relative to the great family of Brahmin Mandarin Fusilier de Grandissime. It was evidently spurious.” This picture of a Creole with a ridiculously exaggerated idea of his own and his family’s importance, is drawn even in the second paragraph of the novel. At the ball one also catches a glimpse of Honore Grandis­ sime, the head of the Grandissimes, and of Aurora Nancanou and her daughter Clotilde, two delightful Creole women, who, however, did not prove satisfactory to Cable’s Creole critics. Next, the reader is introduced to Joseplx Frowenfeld, a young German immigrant, who is ascending the Mississippi with his father, mother, and two sisters. The father is assured

" The Grandissimes, 1. ** In his book Destruction and Reconstruction General Richard Taylor mentions (pp. 108—109) one Leclerc Fusilier living in the parish of St. Mary. Though Cable may not have drawn his Agricola Fusilier from any member of this family he was certainly aware of using a name that was not of his own invention. *• The Grandissimes, 2. 9 * 124 by a passenger, a cousin of Honore Grandissime’s, that it is not entirely impossible to live in the swamps they are passing by — “if one may call a negro a man,” And the Creole tells him of a run-away Negro living alone in the swamp. The story is true, he assures him. “ ‘You can hask ’oo you like!’ (A Creole always provides against incredulity.)” ®® Soon after their arrival in New Orleans the Frowenfelds are all struck by a fever from which only Joseph recovers. Joseph is taken care of by Doctor Keene, who diverts him by telling the history of two most prominent Creole families, the Grandissimes and the De Grapions. The chapters containing this history, are, I think, the two most important in the novel for the understanding of the author’s attitude towards the Creoles. To the outward spectator, William Dean Howells wrote,5i Cable’s presentation of the Creoles of the early nine­ teenth century seemed affectionately, almost fondly, apprecia­ tive. There is evidence that this opinion was shared by many other critics.52 Such an opinion bears witness to either a superficial knowledge of the social conditions in the New Orleans of the nineteenth century or a superficial reading of the book during which interest has been concentrated on the female Creole characters. The two chapters mentioned were certainly not written by a man who was fondly appreciative of the Creoles but rather by one who wished to take them down a peg. In 1673, the doctor told young Frowenfeld, “and in the royal hovel of a Tchoupitoulas village not far removed from that ‘Buffalo’s Grazing-ground,’ now better known as New Orleans, was born Lufki-Humma, othei-wise Red Clay.” The mother of Lufki-Humma had a pedigree “extending back beyond the Mexican origin of her nation, and disappearing only in the effulgence of her great original, the orb of day himself.” And her father was “a chief ^f considerable emin­ ence; that is to say, of seven feet s t a t u r e .” 53 “And now, since this was Agricola’s most boasted ancestor — since it appears

“ Ibid., 12. Heroines of Fiction, II, 236. “ E.g. Gflder and Barrie. “ The Grandissimes, 21. 125

the darkness of her cheek had no effect to make him less white, or qualify his right to smite the fairest and most distant descendant of an African on the face, and since this proud station and right could not have sprung from the squalid surroundings of her birth, let us for a moment contemplate these crude materials.” And Cable goes on to give a descrip­ tion of Lufki-Humma’s royal blood, the straightness of her infantine bones, and the delicate fineness and admirable spaciousness of her skull, a description, the style of which shows it to be directed against the Creoles’ pride in their ancestry. Lufki-Humma was found by D’Iberville’s exploring party and was married to Epaminondas Fusilier. “Thus, while the pilgrim fathers of the Mississippi Delta with Gallic reckless­ ness were taking wives and moot-wives from the ill specimens of three races, arose, with the church’s benediction, the royal house of the Fusiliers in Louisiana. But the true, main Gran- dissime stock, on which the Fusiliers did early, ever, and yet do, love to marry, has kept itself lily-white ever since France has loved lilies — as to marriage, that is; as to less responsible entanglements, why, of course —” These few lines contain the most severe criticism of the morals of the Creoles; Cable, however, is not content but goes on to deal out blow after blow. Demosthenes De Grapion, he tells us, who had vied with Epaminondas Fusilier for the Indian girl, “with due eccle­ siastical sanction, also took a most excellent wife, from the first cargo of House of Correction girls.” Zephyr Grandissime, who had also been one of D’Iberville’s exploring party, married “a lady of rank, a widow without children, sent from France to Biloxi under a lettre de cachet." The Grandissime family grew rapidly. “The old nobility of their stock, including particularly the unnamed blood of her of the lettre de cachet, showed forth in a gracefulness of carriage, that almost identified a De Grandissime wherever you saw him, and in a transparency of flesh and classic beauty of feature, that made their daughters extra-marriageable in a

« Ibid., 22— 23. « Ibid., 27— 28. « Ibid., 28. 126 land and day which was bearing a wide reproach for a male celibacy not of the pious sort.” st After giving this additional thrust at the early Creoles’ moral standard, Cable turns to a description of the Fusi­ liers, who are there to represent Creole intolerance towards strangers. “In a flock of Grandissimes might always be seen a Fusilier or two; fierce-eyed, strong-beaked, dark, heavy- taloned birds, who, if they could not sing, were of rich plumage, and could talk and bite, and strike, and keep up a ruffled crest and a self-exalting bad humor. They early learned one favorite cry, with which they greeted all strangers, crying the louder, the more the endeavor was made to appease them; ‘Invaders! Invaders!’” ®* In contrast to the family tree of the Grandissimes that of the De Grapions was very slender; “it \^as sad to contemplate, in that colonial beginning of days, thr^e generations of good, Gallic blood tripping jocundly along in attenuated Indian file.” 69 Here we should remember that^ the good, Gallic blood was partly that of a House of Correction girl. The De Grapions had “a sad aptness for dying young”. “It was altogether supposable that they would have spread out broadly in the land; but they were such inveterate duelists, such brave Indian-fighters, such adventurous swamp-rangers, and such lively free-livers, that, however numerously their half-kin may have been scattered about in an unacknowledged way, the avowed name of De Grapion had become less and less frequent in lists where leading citizens subscribed their signatures”.B° During the reign of De Vaudreuil, Clotilde, an orphan of a murdered Huguenot, was brought to Louisiana as a fille a la cassette. Vaudreuil, writes Cable, was the Solomon of Loui­ siana. “For splendor, however, not for v dsdom. Those were the gala days of license, extravagance and pomp. He made paper money to be as the leaves of the forest for multitude; it was nothing accounted of in the days of lihe Grand Marquis.”

" Ibid., 2»—29. « Ibid., 29. “ Ibid., 29. •• Ibid., 29. Ibid., 31. 127

Qotilde refusing to marry*a soldier, the Ursuline nuns complained about her to Vaudreuil. Here is the way they talked in New Orleans in those days. If you care to understand why Louisiana has grown up so out of joint, note the tone of those who governed her in the middle of the last century: “What, my child,” the Grand Marquis said, “you a fille a la cassette? France, for shame! Come here by my side. Will you take a little advice from an old soldier? It is in one word — submit. Whatever is inevitable, submit to it. If you want to live easy and sleep easy, do as other people do — submit. Consider submission in the present case; how easy, how comfortable, and how little it amounts to! A little hearing of mass, a little telling of beads, a little crossing of one’s self — what is that? One need not believe.in them. Don’t shake your head. Take my example; look at me; all these things go in at this ear and out at this. Do king or clergy trouble me? Not at all. For how does the king in these matters of religion? I shall not even tell you, he is such a bad boy. Do you not know that all the noblesse, and all the savants, and especially all the archbishops and cardinals, — all, in a word, but such silly little chicks as yourself, — have found out that this religious business is a joke? Actually a joke, every whit; except, to be sure, this heresy phase; that is a joke they cannot take. Now, I wish you well, pretty child; so if you — eh? — truly, my pet, I fear we shall have to call you unreasonable. ***»“

She was taken to the Marquise who pointed out to her that she was a soldier’s wife herself. “She explained, further, that he was rather soft-hearted, while she was a business woman; also that the royal commissary’s rolls did not comprehend such a thing as a spinster, and — incidentally — that living by principle was rather out of fashion in the Province just then.” Eventually Clotilde married Georges De Grapion, who was mortified at the way the Grandissime family was growing. “ ‘My father’s policy was every way bad,’ he said to his spouse; ‘it is useless, and probably wrong, this trying to thin them out by duels; we will try another plan.’” However, not long after the birth of a son he was killed in a duel with a Gran-

« Ibid., 32— 33. « Ibid., 33. Ibid., 35. 128 dissime. Madame Aurora Nancanou was the granddaughter of this Georges De Grapion. At this point of his narrative Doctor Keene was interrupted by Frowenfeld, who complained that it was hard to distinguish between all the Grandissimes. “ ‘Well, now,’ said the doctor, ‘let me tell you, don’t try. They can’t do it themselves. Take them in the mass — as you would shrimps.’ ” And then the doctor finished his story by telling the young immigrant how Aurora Nancanou’s huiband had lost his estate to Agricola Fusilier in gambling and' his life in a duel. He had gone on business to New Orleans, where he had met Agricola. “ ‘They became intimate at once, drank together, danced with the quadroons together, and got into as much mischief in three days as I ever did in a fortnight.’ ” They had started gambling and, having lost all his money, Nancanou had staked his estate; and having lost this game, he had accused Agricola of cheating.ss « ‘But, Frowenfeld, you must know, withal the Creoles are such gamblers, they never cheat; they play absolutely fair. So Agricole had to challenge the planter.’ ” Having killed Nancanou, Agricola had written to the widow that if she would state in writing her belief that the stakes had been won fairly, he would give back the estate. “ ‘You see, he wanted to stand before all creation — the Creator did not make so much difference — in the most exquisitely proper light; so he puts the laws of humanity under his feet, and anoints himself from head to foot with Creole punctilio.’ ” The widow and her father had answered by sending him a better title. “ ‘Creole-like, they managed to bestir themselves to that extent and there they stopped.’ ” “ ‘Did you ever hear of a more perfect specimen of Creole pride? That is the way with all of them. Show me any Creole, or any number of Creoles, in any sort of contest, and right down at the founda­ tion of it all, I will find you this same [preposterous, apathetic, fantastic, suicidal pride. It is as lethaijgic and ferocious as an

“ Ibid., 36. •• Ibid., 38. Ibid., 39. 129 alligator.’ ” And now, as poor as could be, Aurora, and her daughter Clotilde were living in the city. One day Frowenfeld made the acquaintance of Honore Grandissime, a man, whose “whole appearance was a dazzling contradiction of the notion that a Creole is a person of mixed blood.” They get into a discussion of Frowenfeld’s future. “A friend of mine,” said Frowenfeld, “has told me I must ‘com­ promise.’ ” “You must get acclimated,” responded the Creole; “not in body only, that you have done; but in mind — in taste —. in conversa­ tion — and in convictions too, yes, ha, ha! They all do it — all who come. They hold out a little while — a very little; then they open their stores on Sunday, they import cargoes of Africans, they bribe the officials, they smuggle goods, they have colored house-keepers. My-de’-seh, the water must expect to take the shape of the bucket; eh?” ’®

He admits that all those things do not have his approval; but he is a merchant, not a reformer, and he cannot afford to condemn them. Frowenfeld opened a small apothecary shop. In a city where “so very little English was spoken and no newspaper published except that beneficiary of eighty subscribers, the ‘Moniteur de la Louisiane’”, this shop became a rendezvous.Here Doctor Keene expressed an opinion which was certainly also Cable’s. “ ‘One of the things I pity most in this vain world,’ drawled Doctor Keene, ‘is a hive of patriots who don’t know where to swarm.’ ” ’ 2 One of these patriots coming to the shop was Agricola Fusi­ lier. He regarded the American government as the most clap­ trap government in the universe.^^ The apothecary being intro­ duced to him as Professor Frowenfeld, he welcomed him to Louisiana. “Professor,” said the old man, extending something like the paw of a lion, and giving Frowenfeld plenty of time to become tho-

•» Ibid., 40. “ Ibid., 47. » Ibid., 46. ’■ Ibid., 56. ” Ibid., 57. ” Ibid., 59. 130 roughly awed, “this is a pleasure as magnificent as unexpected! A scientific man? ■— in Louisiana?” He looked around upon the doctors as upon a graduating class. “Professor, I am rejoiced!” He paused again, shaking the apothecary’s hand with great ceremony. “I do assure you, sir, I dislike to relinquish your grasp. Do me the honor to allow me to become your friend! I congratulate my down-trodden country on the acquisition of such a citizen! ***” ’<

Now, this welcoming speech by old Agricola Fusilier is rather surprising. The Fusiliers had, earlier in the book,'^® been described' as extremely hostile to strangers, their favourite cry with which they greeted all strangers being, “Invaders! Invaders'” This does not tally with Agricola’s cordial recep­ tion of Frowenfeld. Furthermore, his words, “A scientific man? — in Louisiana?” are an indirect criticism of the low scientific standard of his own state, certainly an unexpected criticism from this inveterate Creole patriot, who is convinced that the Louisiana Creole is “the noblest variety of enlightened man”."6 When Frowenfeld maintains that he is a student, not a professor, the old Creole demonstrates his exaggerated belief in his own importance. “H-my young friend,” said the patriarch, turning toward Joseph with a tremendous frown, “when I, Agricola Fusilier, pronounce you a professor, you are a professor. Louisiana will not look to you for your credentials; she will look to me!” ”

The discussion turns to the introduction of English into Louisiana. Somebody utters his belief that the Creoles will soon learn that language. Agricola is shocked. “English is not a language, sir; it is a jargon! And when this young simpleton, Claiborne, attempts to cram it down the public windpipe in the courts, as I understands he intends, he will fail! Hah! sir, I know men in this city who would rather eat a dog than speak English! I speak it, but I also speak Choctaw.” “The new land titles will be in English.” “They will spurn his rotten titles. And if he attempts to invalidate their old ones, why, let him do it! Napoleon Buonaparte” (Italian

” Ibid., 59. ” Ibdi,. 29. " Ibid., 62. " Ibid., 66. 131 pronunciation) “will make good every arpent within the next two years. Think so? I know it! Howl H-I perceive it! H-I hope the yellow fever may spare you to witness it.”

When Doctor Keene feigns not to know which is la belle langue, Agricola turns upon him “a look of unspeakable contempt”.^® One of Frowenfeld’s customers was Aurora Nancanou. Many j^ears later Cable wrote in a magazine article that Creole maidens and mothers have a distin.ct superiority over their brothers and husbands in matters social, calling their vivacity overflowing. In his fiction the Creole women are as a rule beautiful and prepossessing; and Aurora Nancanou and her daughter Clotilde are no exceptions. This is how the mother is described. “She was heavily veiled; but the sparkle of her eyes, which no multiplication of veils could quite extinguish, her symmetrical and will-fitted figure, just escap­ ing smallness, her grace of movement, and a soft, joyous voice, had several days before led Frowenfeld to the confident con­ clusion that she was young and beautiful.” And her daughter is, of course, just as beautiful. “It is not strange that the dwellers round about dispute as to which is the fairer, nor that in the six months during which the two have occupied No. 19 the neighbors have reached no conclusion on this sub­ ject. If some young enthusiast compares the daughter — in her eighteenth year — to a bursting blush rosebud full of promise, some older one immediately retorts that the other — in her thirty-fifth — is the red, red, full-blown, faultless joy of the garden.” si By and by, as the story goes on, their characters are revealed to the reader. However, not even these ladies, who are evidently favourites of the author’s, escape criticism. They are poor, and their poverty is partly brought about by Creole improvidence. “From a Creole standpoint, they were not bad managers. They could dress delightfully on an incredibly small outlay; could wear a well-to-do smile over an inward sigh of stifled

« Ibid., 60. ” “N ew Orleans R evisited’', Book-News Monthly, April, 1909. •• The Grandissimes, 54. «' Jbid., 79. 132 hunger; could tell the parents of their one or two scholars to consult their convenience, and then come home to a table that would make any kind soul weep; but as to estimating the velocity of bills payable in their orbits, such trained sagacity was not theirs.” Theirs, however, was an economy “that made their very hound a Spartan; for, had that economy been half as wise as it was heroic, his one meal a day would not always have been the cook’s leavings of cold rice and the lickings of the gumbo plates.” Furthermore, Aurora is superstitious. She goes to Palmyre, a voodoo-woman, to ask her to work a spell.ss And she does not like to receive visitors on a Monday. “The reception of Monday callers is a source of misfortune never known to fail, save in rare cases when good luck has already been secured by smearing the front walk or the banquette with Venetian red.” One night when Frowenfeld is taking the air on the Place d’Armes, he is observed by a Negress. She finds that his blue eyes, “w'hile they are both strong and modest, are noticeable, too, as betraying fatigue, and the shade of gravity in them is deepened by a certain w'orn look of excess — in books; a most unusual look in New Orleans in those day';" “' Here again is an example of Cable’s criticising the Creoles for lack of interest in literature and learning. Many leading Creoles were out that night for a walk. Cable gives the names of a great number of them, and they are mostly real, not fictional names. This mention of their family names in a novel was probably not to the taste of the Creoles, for, as Cable writes elsewhere,8s “the old Creoles never for­ give a public mention.” In this crowd is also one of- the Gran- dissimes, a young man with “a joyous, noble face, a merry tongue and giddy laugh, and a confession of experiences which

« Ibid., 152. « Ibid., 90. «• Ibid., 81. “ Ibid., 98. “ Old Creole Dags, 121. 133 these pages, fortunately for their moral tone, need not re­ count.” 8' Suddenly there was a stir among the people. “Some stared, others slowly approached, while others turned and moved away; but a common indignation was in the breast of that thing dreadful everywhere, but terrible in Louisiana, the Majority. For there, in the presence of those good citizens, before the eyes of the proudest and fairest mothers and daughters of New Orleans, glaringly, on the open Plaza, the Creole whom Joseph had met by the graves in the field, Honore Grandissime, the uttermost flower on the topmost branch of the tallest family tree ever transplanted from France to Louisiana, Honore, — the worshiped, the magnificent, — in the broad light of the sun’s going down, rode side by side with the Yankee governor and was not a s h a m e d !” 8s The style of the whole passage shows clearly that Cable considered the reaction of the Creole majority ridiculous. On his walk Frowenfeld meets Agricola Fusilier, who, in discussing Governor Claiborne, states that he is an American and consequently dishonest, since no American can be honest. “I am an American myself,” said Frowenfeld, rising up with his face burning. The citizen rose up also, but unruffled. “My beloved young friend,” laying his hand heavily upon the other’s shoulder, “you are not. You were merely born in America.” But Frowenfeld was not appeased. “Hear me through,” persisted the flatterer. “You were merely born in America. I, too, was born in America; but will any man responsible for his opinion mistake me — Agricola Fusilier — for an American?” '’

The same subject, the conviction of the Creoles that they are not Americans, is discussed several times in the novel. Frowenfeld takes it up on a ride with Honore Grandissime. “Mr. Grandissime, is not your Creole ‘we’ a word that does much damage?” T.he Creole’s response was at first only a smile, followed by a

The Grandissimes, 102. Ibid., 103. «• Ibid., 110. 134 thoughtful counteoance; but he presently said, with some sud­ denness: “My-de’-seh, yes. Yet you see I am, even this moment, forgetting we are not a separate people. Yes, our Creole ‘we’ does damage, and our Creole ‘you’ does more. I assure you, sir, I try hard to get my people to understand that it is time to stop calling those who come and add themselves to the community, aliens, interlopers, invaders. ***” «>

Later in the same discussion Frowenfeld points out that in most civilized countries the immigrant is welcome but in Loui­ siana he is not. Only an immigrant who is willing to give up his peculiar opinions may be welcomed.oi To his surprise Frowenfeld learns that there is another Honore Grandissime, a “free man of color”, who is half- brother of the head of the family. Cable’s representing the head of a leading Creole family as having a quadroon half-brother was, of course, a deadly insult to the Creoles, who reacted to it in a most violent manner. Frowenfeld meets with success as a business-man, a fact that makes him mention to Honors Grandissime that he has some thought of employing an assistant. The following mor­ ning the apothecary finds some forty men gathered in front of his shop. They are all Creoles and nine tenths of them do not understand a single word of English. However, Frowen- feld’s gesture of dismissal is so eloquent that they leave at once, mortified at the way he treated them. He had treated them as if they all wanted situations. Was this so? Far from it. Only twenty men were applicants; the other twenty were friends who had come to see them get the place. And again, thaugh, as the apothecary had said, none of them knew anything about the drug business — no, nor about,any other business under the heavens — they were all willing that he should teach them — except one. A young man of patrician softness and costly apparel tarried a moment after the general exodiis, and quickly concluded that on Frowenfeld’s account it was probably as well that he could not qualify, since he was expecting fri>m France an important government appointment as soon as these,troubles should be settled and Louisiana restored to her former happj' condition. But he had a friend —• a cousin — whom he would recommend, just the man

« Ibid., 194. " Ibid., 195. 135 for the position; a splendid fellow, popular, accomplished — what? the best trainer of dogs that M. Frowenfeld might ever hope to look upon; a “so good fisherman as I never saw!” — the marvel of the ball-room — could handle a partner of twice his weight; the speaker had seen him take a lady so tall that his head hardly came up to her bosom, whirl her in the waltz from right to left — this way! and then, as quick as lightning, turn and whirl her this way, from left to right — “so grezful ligue a peajohn! He could read and write, and knew more comig song!” — the speaker would hasten to secure him before he should take some other situation.'^

Here again Cable makes fun of the Creoles. They were repre­ sented as ignoramuses, interested only in dancing, fishing, and training of dogs — (it did not matter whether one or twenty or all of them were represented in a certain way, it was taken by-the Creoles as signifying all of them). Instead of the wonderful waltzer another Creole, Raoul Innerarity, got the situation as shop assistant. He came to Frowenfeld, wishing to exhibit in his window a picture he had painted. “It was natural that these things should come to ‘Frowenfeld’s corner,’ for there oftener than elsewhere', the critics were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those cri­ tics; and, fortunately, we have a few still left.” The name of the young Creole’s picture was, as he said, “Louisiana rif- using to hanter de h-Union”. It made Frowenfeld silently wonder at Louisiana’s anatomy. Innerarity was convinced about the excellence of his work and asked 250 dollars for it. Frowenfeld said: “If it could become the means of reminding this community that crude ability counts next to nothing in art, and that nothing else in this world ought to work so hard as genius, it would be worth thousands of dollars!”

Frowenfeld takes up the subject, that of Creole art, in a discussion with Aurora and Clotilde. He maintains that the bane of all Creole art-effort is amateurism. “That is to say,” said Frowenfeld, apologizing for the homeliness of his further explanation by a smile, “a kind of ambitious « Ibid., 142— 143. « Ibid., 145. « Ibid., 147. 1 0 136 indolence that lays very large eggs, but can neither see the necessity for building a nest beforehand, nor command the patience to hatch the eggs afterward.”

He goes on to say: “Nothing on earth can take the place of hard and patient labor. But that, in this community, is not esteemed; most sorts of it are contemned; the humbler sorts are despised, and the higher are regarded with mingled patronage and commiseration. Most of those who come to my shop with their efforts at art, hasten to explain, either that they are merely seeking pastime, or else that they are driven to their course by want; and if I advise them to take their work back and finish it, they take it back and never return. Industry is not only despised, but has been degraded and disgraced, handed over into the hands of African savages.” “Doze Creole’ is lezzy," said Aurora. “That is a hard word to apply to those who do not consciously deserve it,” said Frowenfeld; “but if they could only wake up to the fact, — find it out themselves —” ••

Frowenfeld tries to find an explanation why Louisiana is “so sadly in arrears to the civilized world.” He admits that the climate is too comfortable and the soil too rich, but the main reason is a defective organization of society, “which keeps this community, and will continue to keep it for an indefinite time to come, entirely unprepared and disinclined to follow the course of modern thought.” ‘•One great general subject of thought now is human rights, — universal human rights. The entire literature of the world is becoming tinctured with contradictions of the dogmas upon which society in this section is built. Human rights is, of all subjects, the one upon which this community is most violently determined to hear no -discussion. It has pronounced that slavery and caste are right, and sealed up the whole subject. \\^at, then, will they do with the world’s literature? They will coldly decline to look at it, and will become, more and more as the world moves on, a com­ paratively illiterate people.” ”

Here Frowenfeld’s (Cable’s) criticism of the civilization of Louisiana is directed not only toward^ the Creoles but the whole white population. The continuation of his argument is

« Ibid., 181. »• Ibid., 181— 182. « Ibid., 183. 137 interesting but since it deals with slavery and caste, I will leave it for the present. In the description of a family reunion of the Grandissimes Cable finds opportunities to make some thrusts at the Creoles. He begins with a picture of some houses “displaying architec­ tural features which identify them with an irrevocable past — a past when the faithful and true Creole could, without fear of contradiction, express his religious belief that the anti­ pathy he felt for the Americain invader was an inborn horror laid lengthwise in his ante-natal bones by a discriminating and appreciative Providence.” ss These houses were the resi­ dences of the earlier aristocracy — “all that pretty crew of counts, chevaliers, marquises, colonels, dons, etc., who loved their kings, and especially their kings’ moneys, with an abandon which affected the accuracy of nearly all their accounts.” With the Grandissimes the opposition against Honore is great. Among his many sins against Creole tradition he had declined a military commission and engaged in commerce — “shop-keeping, parbleuV' “See what foreign education does!” cried a Mandarin de Gran- dissime of the Baton Rouge Coast. “I am sorry now” — derisively — “that I never sent my boy to France, am I not? No, No-o-o! I would rather my son should never know how to read, than that he should come back from Paris repudiating the sentiments and prejudices of his own father. Is education better than family peace? Ah, bah! My son make friends with Americains and tell me they —• that call a negro ‘monsieur’ — are as good as his father? But tliat is what we get for letting Honore become a merchant. Ha! the degradation! Shaking hands with men who do not believe in the slave trade!

Their indignation, however, gradually disappeared, and they went on drawing their stipends; “for, blow the wind east or blow the wind west, the affinity of the average Grandissime for a salary abideth forever.” i*** And they began to find

« Ibid., 202. " Ibid.. 203. ■« Ibid., 205. '•> Ibid., 205— 206. Ibid., 208. 138 extenuating circumstances in Honore’s behaviour. “Yet, after all, a Grandissime would be a Grandissime still; whatever he did he did openly. And wasn’t that glorious — never to be ashamed of anything, no matter how bad? It was not every one who could ride with the governor.” Here Cable’s irony is easy to trace. It is obvious that he himself is far from con­ vinced that it is glorious never to be ashamed of anything. The description of the male members of the family is not very flattering. Cable calls them “gallant crew” with obvious irony, and one of them is styled “a piratical-looking black- beard”.i«< However, as we may expect, the young ladies are attractive. But if you can command your powers of attention, despite those children who are shouting Creole French and sliding down the rails of the front stair, turn the eye to the laughing squadron of beautiful girls, which every few minutes, At an end of the veranda, appears, wheels and disappears, and you note, as it were by flashes, the characteristics of face and figure that mark the Louisianaises in the perfection of the new-blown flower. You see that blondes are not impossible; there, indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but that one has blue eyes and golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling of their eyebrows, here and there some heavier and more velvety, where a less vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. As Grandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed the medium Creole stature, an appearance heightened by the fashion of their robes. There is scarcely a rose in all their cheeks and a full red-ripeness of the lips would hardly be in keeping; but Uiere is plenty of life in their eyes, which glance out between the curtains of their long lashes with a merry dancing that keeps time to the prattle of tongues. You are not able to get a straight look into them, and if you could you would see only your own image cast back in pitiful miniature; but you turn away and feel, as you fortify yourself with an inward smile, that they know you, you man, throu^ and through, like a little song.‘“ I Nor can any reader fail to be charmed by the Grandissime matrons. Honor^’s mother, whose still beautiful face is lit up by “a candid, serene and lovable stnile” and crowned by the “glistening snow-drift” of her hair, is a majestic woman.

>« Ibid., 208. •« Ibid., 211. •« Ibid., 209— 210. Ibid., 210. 139

Her daughter has “wonderful black hair and a white brow as wonderful”, and in her the commanding carriage of the mother is tempered to a gentle dignity and calm.io^ And the others, anonymous, are described as courtly, with animated manners. Honore later decides to restitute to Aurora Nancanou the property won by gambling by Agricola Fusilier and now in his hands. His financial position is undermined by this act. Then his half-brother proposes to enlist his capital in the firm, on one condition. “So just a condition,” said the merchant, raising his whisper so much that the rentier laid a hand in his elbow, — “such mere justice,” he said, more softly, “ought to be an easy condition. God knows” —■ he lifted his glance reverently — “my very right to exist comes after yours. You are the elder.”

The condition was that the firm’s name should be Grandis- sime Brothers.^'^^ A leading Creole taking a coloured relative into his firm as a partner was, of course, a development extremely shocking to the Creole readers of the novel. In this situation Honore failed to pacify some of his relatives. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that “all or nothing” attitude which; as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana. You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within the angle of the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their heads in unspeakable poverty, their nobility kept green by unflinching self-respect, and their poetic and pathetic pride revelling in ancestral, perennial rebellion against common sense.'®*

To end this survey of Cable’s treatment of the Creoles in his novel The Grandissimes here is the description of how Frowenfeld’s shop was ruined by a Creole mob. With a huzza the accumulated crowd moved off. Chance carried them up the rue Royale; they sang-a song; they came to Frowen­ feld’s. It was an Americain establishment; that was against it. It was a gossiping place of Americain evening loungers; that was against it. It was a sorcerer’s den — (we are on an ascending ■” Ibid., 209. Ibid., 353. >•* Ibid., 372. 1 0 * 140 scale); its proprietor had refused employment to some there present, had refused credit to others, was an impudent condemner of the most approved Creole sins, had been beaten over the head only the day before; all these were against it. But, worse still, the building was owned by the f.m.c., and unluckiest of all, Raoul stood in the door and some of his kinsmen in the crowd stopped to have a word with him. The crowd stopped. A nameless fellow in the throng — he was still singing — said: “Here’s the place,” and dropped two bricks through the glass of the show-window. Raoul, with a cry of retaliative rage, drew and lifted a pistol; but a kinsman jerked it from him and three others quickly pinioned him and bore him off struggling, pleased to get him away unhurt. In ten minutes, Frowenfeld’s was a broken-windowed, open-doored house, full of unrecognizable rubbish that had escaped the torch only through a chance rumor that the Governor’s police were coming, and the consequent stampede of the mob.""

These quotations from The Grandissimes, many of which I have left without comment, as they seem to speak for them­ selves, show that in this novel Cable offered severe criticism of the character, the moral standard, and the culture of the Creoles. The author stresses their vices — superstitiousness, scorn of work, exaggerated pride, small regard for truth and justice — in such a way that the reader gets the impression that the race had more of evil than of good qualities. Of the male Creole characters there is only one in which good qualities preponderate, Honord Grandissime. His education in Paris has given him broader views, but even he hesitates between right and wrong: It is only through the influence of Frowenfeld that the restitution of the plantation is brought about. Madame Delphine is a romantic story dealing mainly with the problem of the quadroons, but there are two Creole charac­ ters in it that are of interest in this connection. Capitaine Lemaitre is the victim of a misdirected education. As a child he had “fallen to the care of a rugged old military grandpa of the colonial school, whose unceasing lendeavor had been to make ‘his boy’ as savage and ferocious a holder of unimpeach­ able social rank as it became a pure-blooded French Creole to be who would trace his pedigree back to the god Mars.” m He was constantly being asked to remember that none of his Ibid., 374— 375. Old Creole Days, 8. 141 family line “ever kept the laws of any government or creed”. At twenty-one he had been cultivated “to that pitch where he scorned to practise any vice, or any virtue, that did not include the principle of self-assertion ” . “ 2 As a result of his education he became a smuggler and pirate. The other Creole is Pere Jerome, a member of one of the city’s leading families. He is a little man but the “roundest and happiest-looking priest” in New Orleans.'i* To his surprise the reader finds Pere Jerome (a Creole priest!) to be a most charming, wise and good man. His philosophy may be sum­ marized in these words of his: “We all participate in one another’s sins.” According to this broad-minded belief of his, which was certainly Cable’s own, the community is, at least to some extent, responsible for the individual’s sins. In this story the quadroon balls are mentioned in a way that certainly did not please its Creole readers. The balls that were got up for them by the male sang-pur were to that day what the carnival is to the present. Society balls given the same nights proved failures through the coincidence. The magnates of government, — municipal, state, federal, — those of the army, of the learned professions and of the clubs, — in short, the white male aristocracy in every thing save the ecclesiastical desk, — were, there. Tickets were high-priced to insure the ex­ clusion of the vulgar.”*

Perhaps it should be added that at that time, the early 19th century, the white aristocracy of the city was to a large extent Creole. In Dr. Sevier, his second novel, Cable does not primarily deal with Creole life. There is, however, one Creole character of some importance in the book, Narcisse, Doctor Sevier’s office clerk. This young Creole is untruthful, conceited, and dishonest, but at the same time extremely charming. Mary labored honestly and arduously to dislike him — to hold a repellent attitude toward him. But he was too much for her. It was easy enough when he was absent; but one look at his handsome face, so rife with animal innocence, and despite herself she was Ibid., 8— 9. >'* Ibid., 11. •“ Ibid., 1.3. Ibid., 6. 142 ready to reward his displays of sentiment and erudition with laughter that, mean what it might, always pleased and flattered him. “Can you help liking him?” she would ask John. “I can’t, to save my life!” ”*

He has an incurable propensity to borrow money, which he does in the most disarming way. Here is an example of his borrowing from John Richling. “Mistoo Itchlin,” resumed the other, “do you not fine me im­ proving in my p’onouncement of yo’ lang-widge? I fine I don’t use such bad land-widge like biffo. I am shue you muz’ ’ave notiz since some time I always soun’ that awer in yo’ name. Mistoo Itchlin, will you ’ave that kin’ness to haw me two-an-a-’alf till the lass of that month?”

During a yellow fever epidemic Narcisse is a brave nurse. “Dr. Sevier, it is true, could not get rid of the conviction for years afterward that one victim would have lived had not Narcisse talked him to death.” And in telling Richling about his successes in nursing, Narcijsse confesses that he was paid ten dollars a night. “An’ yet,” he hurriedly added, remembering his indebtedness to his auditor, “ ’tis aztonizhin’ ’ow ’tis expensive to live. I haven’ got a picayune of that money pwesently! I’m aztonizh’ myseff!”

As an example of his conceit may be mentioned the episode when he intends to write “some obitua’ ’emawks about that Lady By’on”.i2o There he shows his entire lack of self- criticism. Narcisse is a representative of those poor Creoles for whom their well-to-do relatives blush. To an outside reader he is an amusing type, but to the Creoles of the 1880’s he may have appeared differently.

Dt. Sevier, 169— 170. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 284. “ • Ibid., 285. •» Ibid., 336— 339. CHAPTER XII

CABLE’S TREATMENT OF THE CREOLES IN HIS HISTORICAL WORK

Writing in “My Politics” about The Creoles of Louisiana Cable states that receiving from his editors a proposal to expand his work for the Tenth Census into a history of the Louisiana Creoles, he consented, “well pleased to write histo­ rically of a people w'hom I was accused of misrepresenting in fiction”. Consequently we can be certain that Cable approached his task with a desire to give a picture as just as possible of the Creoles. This book is therefore a most valuable source as to the author’s opinions regarding that racial group. Here the exposition cannot have been coloured by the artist’s desire to choose picturesque types, to stress humorous traits, etc. After describing the life of the earliest French immigrants, Cable turns to the first generation of Creoles. Now these children were taking their parents’ places, and with Latin ductility were conforming to the mold of their nearest surroundings. They differed from their transatlantic stock much as the face of nature in Louisiana differed from that in France. A soil of unlimited fertility became, through slavery, not an incen­ tive to industry, but a promise of unearned plenty. A luxurious and enervating climate joined its influence with this condition to debase even the Gallic love of pleasure to an unambitious apathy and an untrained sensuality. The courteous manners of France were largely retained; but the habit of commanding a dull and abject slave class, over which a “black code” gave every white man full powers of police, induced a certain fierce imperiousness of will and temper; Their love of freedom. Cable goes on to say, rose at times to an attitude of arrogant superiority over all constraint. 144 occasioning harsh comment in the reports sent to France by the officers of the king. Chase was almost their only form of exertion and woodcraft often their only education.i As for the gentler sex, catching less grossness from negro slavery and less rudeness from the wilderness, they were, in mind as well as morals, superior to the men. They could read and write and make a little music.-

After mentioning their love of gambling and dancing. Cable gives the following characterization of the first Creoles in Louisiana. Unrestrained, proud, intrepid, self-reliant, rudely voluptuous, of a high intellectual order, yet uneducated, unreasoning, impulsive, and inflammable — such was the first native-born generation of Franco-Louisianians.-

In discussing the origin of the Creoles, Cable makes a state­ ment obviously intended to demonstrate that the Creoles had no reason for pride in their ancestry. There is no need to distinguish between the higher and humbler grades of those from whom they sprang. A few settlers only were persons of rank and station. Many were the children of the casket- girls, and many were of such stock as society pronounces less than nothing; yet, in view of that state of society which the French revolution later overturned, any present overplus of honor may as well fall to the children of those who filled the prisons before, as of those who filled them during that bloody convulsion.’

Of the 18th century officials Cable has this to say: To their bad example in living, these dignitaries, almost without exception, added that of corruption in' office. Governors, royal commissaries, post-commandants, — the Marchioness de Vaudreuil conspicuously, — and many lesser ones, stood boldly accusing and accused of the grossest and the pettiest misdemeanors. Doubtless the corruption was exaggerated; yet the testimony is official, abundant, and corroborative, and is verified in the ruinous expenses which at length drove France to abandon the maintenance and sovereignty of the colony she had misgoverned for sixty-three years.‘

‘ The Creoles of Louisiana, 39— 40. ' Ibid., 40. • Ibid., 42. ‘ Ibid., 46. 145

To this sad picture of the administrators of the colony Cable adds another equally sad of other conditions in it. Meanwhile, public morals were debased; idleness and intemper­ ance were general; speculation in the depreciated paper money which flooded the colony became the principal business, and in­ solvency the common condition. Religion and education made poor headway.* Summarizing the development of the earliest Creoles, the author, however, rather suddenly reverses the picture. With many influences against them, they rose from a chaotic con­ dition below the plane of social order to the station of a proud, freedom-loving, agricultural, and commercial people, who W'ere now about to strike the first armed blow ever aimed by Americans against a royal decree.’ And he stresses the fact that the progress thus commenced has been continuous. Their descendants would be a community still more unique than they are, had they not the world-wide trait of a pride of ancestry. But they might as easily be excused for boasting of other things which they have overlooked. A pride of ascent would be as well grounded; and it w'ill be pleasant to show in later chapters that the decadence imputed to them, sometimes even by themselves, has no foundation in fact, but that their course, instead, has been, in the main, upward from first to last, and so continues to-day.’

Here it is interesting to note that the main fault the author finds with the Creoles of his own time is that of pride of ancestry. After this digression, on the whole complimentary to the Creoles, Cable returns to his critical survey of Creole history. He enumerates some of the charges made by the people against Ulloa, the Spanish governor, charges that reflect unfavourably upon their authors. Among other things the governor was charged of having sent to Havana for a wet-nurse, of having ordered the abandonment of a brick-yard on account of its pools of putrid water, of having removed leprous children to the inhospitable settlements at the mouth of the river, of hav­ ing forbidden the public whipping of slaves in the city, and of having landed in New Orleans during a thunder-storm and

' Ibid., 51. 10 146 under other ill omens.® The Creoles of that time were, accord­ ing to Cable, slack-handed and dilatory — “possibly a climatic result”.^ As a consequence the project of forming a republic was abandoned in face of an approaching Spanish fleet. Cable makes the following reflections relative to the revolution of 1768. It was the misfortune of the Creoles to be wanting in habits of mature thought and of self-control. They had not made that study of reciprocal justice and natural rights which becomes men who would resist tyranny. They lacked the steady purpose bred of daily toil. The Creoles were valorous but unreflecting. They had the spirit of freedom, but not the profound principles of right which it be­ comes the duty of revolutionists to assert and struggle for. They arose fiercely against a confusion of real and fancied grievances, sought to be ungoverned rather than self-governed, and, following distempered leaders, became a warning in their many-sided short­ sightedness, and an example only in their audacious courage.®

Of the achievements of the Creoles in aid of the war for American independence Cable is, however, very appreciative. A greater credit is due, he writes, than is popularly accorded for their exploits in this war.® Turning to the Creoles of 1803 Cable writes; The Creole was on every side — handsome, proud, illiterate, elegant in manner, slow, a seeker of office and military com­ mission, ruling society with fierce exclusiveness, looking upon toil as the slave’s proper badge, lending money now at twelve and now at twenty-four per cent, and taking but a secondary and un­ sympathetic part in the commercial life from which was springing the future greatness of his town. What could he do? The American filled the upper Mississippi Valley, England and the Atlantic States, no longer France and Spain, took its products and supplied its wants. The Anglo-Saxon and the Irishman held every advantage; and, ill-equipped and uncommercial, the Creole was fortunate to secure even a third or fourth mercantile rank in the city of his birth.*"

• Ibid., 68. ’ Ibid., 70. » Ibid., 71. ■ • Ibid., 93. Ibid., 137— 138. 147

This characterization may be correct, but it should be noted that earlier in the book n Cable had stated that the first Creoles developed into a proud, freedom-loving, agricultural, and commercial people. The changes in the Creole character seem to have been rapid, indeed! The Creole men. Cable goes on to say, were characterized by moral provincialisms “which travellers recount with undue impatience”. They are said to have been coarse, boastful, vain; and they were, also, deficient in energy and application, without well-directed ambition, unskilful in handicraft — doubtless through negligence only — and totally wanting in that community feeling which begets the study of reciprocal rights and obligations, and reveals the individual’s advantage in the promotion of the common interest. Hence, the Creoles were fonder of pleasant fictions regarding the salubrity, beauty, good order, and advantages of their town, than of measures to justify their assumptions.’*

They were. Cable states, generally unconscious of the repre­ hensible state of affairs, believing strongly in their own excel­ lence. They were also apt to be easily inflamed and easily discouraged, and they devoted a lot of their energy to trivial pleasures.i* Outwardly the Creoles of 1803 were a graceful, well-knit race. Cable points out, adding this picture of the women. The women were fair, symmetrical, with pleasing features, lively, expressive eyes, well-rounded throats, and superb hair; vivacious, decorous, exceedingly tasteful in dress, adorning themselves with superior effect in draperies of muslin enriched with embroideries and much garniture of lace, but with a more moderate display of jewels, which indicated a community of limited wealth. They were much superior to the men in quickness of wit, and excelled them in amiability and in many other good qualities.^'

In conclusion the author states that the Creoles of that time were kind parents, affectionate wives, tractable children, and enthusiastic patriots.^®

“ Ibid., 51. “ Ibid., 139. >» Ibid., 140. “ Ibid., 138— 139. » Ibid., 140. 148

Here it is interesting to note how well most of this charac­ terization tallies with the picture given in The Grandissimes of the Creoles of the early 19th century. The female characters of the novel are beautiful, vivacious, and amiable, while the male ones are, more or less, boastful, vain, unskilful in art, hasty to quarrel, and fond of gambling. Cable describes the commercial life of the 1820’s, adding, however: “Vice put on the same activity that commerce showed. The Creole had never been a strong moral force. The American came in as to gold diggings or diamond fields, to grab and run. The transatlantic immigrant of those days was frequently the offscourings of Europe. The West Indian was a leader in licentiousness, gambling and duelling. ’ lo Thus the author does not blame one particular group for the bad moral conditions in the city. The worst day of all was Sunday.

The stores and shops were open, but toil slackened and license gained headway. Gambling-rooms and ball-rooms were full, weapons were often out, the quadroon masques of the Salle de Conde were thronged with men of high standing* and crowds of barge and raftsmen, as well as Creoles and St. Domingans, gathered at those open-air African dances, carousals, and debaucheries in the rear of the town that have left their monument in the name of “Congo” Square.”

In the chapter “Why Not Bigger Than London?” Cable discusses the reasons why New Orleans did not develop as rapidly as the cities of the North. Through slaveholding an intellectual indolence spread everywhere, and from this mental inertia sprang an invincible provincialism. But the truth lay deeper hid.

In those cities American thought prevailed, and the incoming for­ eigner acccpted it. In New Orleans American thought was foreign, unwelcome, disparaged by the unaspiring, satirical Creole, and often apologized for by the American, who found himself a minority in a combination of social forces oftener in sympathy with European ideas than with the moral energies and the enthusiastic and venturesome enterprise of the New World. Moreover, twenty-

Ibid., 218. ” Ibid., 219. 149 eight thousand slaves and free blacks hampered the spirit of progress by sheer ,dead weight.'®

Cable underlines the fact that the Creoles consciously ham­ pered all progressive tendencies. He [the Creole] retained much power still, as well by his natural force as by his ownership of real estate and his easy coalition with foreigners of like ideas. He cared little to understand. It was his pride not to be understood. He divided and paralyzed public sentiment when he could no longer rule it, and often met the most imperative calls for innovation with the most unbending conser­ vatism. For every movement was change, and every change carried him nearer and nearer toward the current of American ideas and to absorption into their flood, which bore too much the semblance of annihilation.'*

However, as time went by and education improved the oppo­ sition against all things American began to be smoothed out. The old, fierce enmity against the English tongue and American manners began to lose its practical weight and to be largely a matter of fireside sentiment. The rich Creole, both of plantation and town, still drew his inspirations from French tradition, — not from books, — and sought both culture and pastime in Paris. His polish heightened; his language improved; he dropped the West Indian softness that had crept into his pronunciation, and the Africanisms of his black nurse.*®

At the same time the Creoles lost their leading position in society; the suburban lands were sold, old town and down-town property was sinking in value, the trade with Latin countries languished, and the rich Creole was only one here and there among throngs of humbler brethren who were learning the hard lessons of pinched living. To these an English-American training was too valuable to be refused. They took kindly to the American’s counting-room desk. They even began to emigrate across Canal Street.*"

In the Civil War the Creoles were good soldiers. Cable states. They were gallant, brave, enduring, faithful.B ut their atti­ tude towards social matters is severely criticised.

'» Ibid., 252. •• Ibid., 254. « Ibid., 260. *■ Ibid., 262. 150

The Creole’s answer to suggestive inquiry concerning the preven­ tion of overflows, it may easily be guessed, was a short, warm ques­ tion ;• “How?” He thought one ought to tell him. He has ten good “cannots” to one small “can” — or once had; the proportion is better now, and so is the drainage;®*

That there were ways of improving the health of the in­ habitants did not occur to them. The yellow fever was a necessary evil which, on the whole, did not concern them. The Creole did not readily take the fever, and, taking it, commonly recovered. He had, and largely retains still, an absurd belief in his entire immunity from attack. When he has it, it is something else. As for strangers, — he threw up his palms and eyebrows, — nobody asked them to come to New Orleans."

Cable, however, makes the concession that the “Americans” were equally short-sighted. Their minds turned only to com­ merce. “Every summer might bring plague — granted; but winter brought trade, wealth.” 2* , Finally Cable contemplates the contemporary Creoles. In many things the differences between Creoles and others are disappearing. Creole hostility towards “Americans” is little felt; the French language is falling into disuse; the social circles blend into each other. “Sometimes, with the old Gallic intrepidity of conviction, he [the Creole] moves ahead of the

American in progressive thought.” 24 He gives his assent to sanitary reforms, although he often resents official house-to- house inspection and “the disturbance of a state of affairs under which his father and grandjfather reached a good old age and left no end of children.” 24 In his attitude towards the liberated slaves he is often more liberal than Anglo-Saxon Southerners. Such is the progressivti Creole, according to Cable. When he [the Creole] is not so he is very different. In such case he bows his head to fate. His fences are broken; his levee is dangerous, the plastering is falling i]i his parlor; his garden has become a wild, damp grove, weed-grown and untrodden; his sugar is dark, his thin linen coat is homeiiade; he has transferred his hopes to rice and made his home sickly with irrigation; he doesn’t care who you are, and will not sell 1 foot of his land — no, not « Ibid., 275. « Ibid., 292. » Ibid., 307. 151 for price that man can name! — till the red flags hangs out for him on the courthouse square and the man with one drumstick drums him out of house and home. In New Orleans, sad shrinkages in the value of downtown pro­ perty have played havoc with the old Creole rentier. Court officers and lawyers are full of after-dinner stories illustrating the pathetic romance of his fate. He keeps at home, on the front veranda. His wife and daughter tak? in sewing and make orange marmalade and fig preserves on small private contracts. His son is a lounger in the court-rooms. The young man buttons his worn coat tightly about his small waist, walks with a brisk affectation of being pressed for time, stops you silently in Royal Street or Pfere Antoine’s Alley, on the stairway of the old Cabildo, to light his cigarette from your cigar — symbolic action, always lighting his cigarette from some­ body’s cigar — * * * But he has kinsmen, in goodly number, who blush for him; who will tell you so with a strange mixture of pride and humility; and who are an honor and a comfort to their beloved city.“

Cable points out that many Creoles have held high offices in Louisiana and that some are of world-wide fame. And there is hope for the future. They are not “dying out.” Why should they? “Doze climade sood dem” better than it suits any alien who has ever tried the drowsy superabundance of its summer sunlight, and they are becoming ever more and more worthy to survive. Their pride grows less fierce, their courage is no weaker for it, their courtesy is more cordial, they are more willing to understand and be understood, and their tastes for moral and intellectual refinements are growing.*®

In conclusion the author gives a description of the soft Eng­ lish of the Creoles. He is afraid, he writes, tl^at one day the Creole will speak English “with the same dull correctness with which it is delivered in the British House of Lords”. His hope is that that time will be very, very far away.^^ Thus, in this historical work. Cable finds traits of both good and evil in the Creoles of his own time as well ajs those of earlier times. He seems eager to emphasize that their develop­ ment shows a decided ascent, their principal remaining fault being an exaggerated pride in their ancestry. As will have

“ Ibid., 312— 314. « Ibid., 314. « Ibid., 320. 152

appeared from the quotations, Cable’s characterization of earlier generations of Creoles is in hiany cases far from flat­ tering, and it is no wonder that th^ Creoles resented having their ancestors, of whom they were jso proud, exposed in this way. And here and there, there is something in his style that makes even an entirely neutral reader suspect that Cable took a certain pleasure in exposing them. CHAPTER XIII

THE RECEPTION OF CABLE’S EARLY WORK: THE REACTION OF THE CREOLES

Cable’s early short stories seem to have been favourably received by the press. When the first of these stories, “’Sieur George”, was published in Scribner’s Monthly Cable was mentioned in the Nation i as a writer “of some promise”. To “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” the same magazine devoted more attention. It was judged to be cleverly realistic and cleverly dashed with a spice of imaginative feeling. “It is one of the good short magazine stories of which our periodical literature has year by year a few to show, and it is to be put well up towards the rank composed of the half-dozen best of these good stories.” 2 W hen Old Creole Days was out, several critics recognized Cable as an unusually promising writer. The Boston Courier wrote: It is very seldom indeed that we meet with a book so distincUy marking the advent of a writer of high artistic power and fresh observation, as this of Mr. Cable’s. After re-reading carefully, and with the keenest enjoyment, the stories now collected under one heading, we not only have no hesitation in pronouncing their author a genius with special and captivating endowments, but we feel it an imperative critical duty to so declare himJ

■ XVII, 230, October 2, 1873. -• Na/ion, X V Iir, 207, March 26, 1874. ’ Quoted from an advertisement in Cable's The Silent South, New York, 1885. 154

The New York Times found that, to a keen zest for what is antique and picturesque. Cable added a surprising skill, for so young a writer, in conceiving and developing a plot.3 The Christian Intelligencer wrote that the stories displayed an inventive genius “which ranks the author among the best of our modern writers”.* The New Orleans Picayune, which may be supposed to judge the stories with particular competence, wrote: These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole character, and a marked originality.*

In England three of these short stories were published to­ gether with Madame Delphine in one volume.^ In a review of this book, the first edition of Cable’s writings to be published in that country, the Saturday Review ® w rote: *** a certain dimness of style that gave a hazy effect to some of the pages of the earlier novel gives place in Madame Delphine to a more incisive and exact manner of writing. It should be said at once that Mr. Cable writes exceedingly well, with a rich and musical prose that suits his subject; his fault as a stylist is that he introduces too incessantly a profusion of ingenious detail.

After a criticism, on the whole favourable, of' “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” and “Madame D^licieuse”, “Posson Jone’” is mentioned in a manner that is very flattering to its author. ! I *** we recommend any one who is still unconvinced that in Mr. Cable we have gained a novelist with new powers and of brilliant promise to read the last story, Posson Jime’, — we have every confidence in the result. For, unless we are greatly mistaken, he will recognize in the treatment of this short tale a skill in depicting riotous Southern masses of people * * * such as no writer of modern times, except Flaubert, has displayed.

Much attention was paid by the li erary critics to The Grandissimes. In Scribner’s Monthly Hjalmar H. Boyesen wrote

* Madame Delphine: A Novelette; and Other Tales, Frederick Warne & Co., London, 1881. » London, LII, 237—238, August 20, 1881. 155

a long review.® Cable, he maintained, was a literary pioneer who had broken a path into the heart of Creole civilization; and he was the first Southern novelist to make a contribution of permanent value to American literature. The Grandissimes, although obviously the result of years of reflection and acute observation, has the beautiful spontaneity of an improvisation, according to Boyesen, who goes on to write: For all that, it is patent to any one skilled in aesthetic analysis that the author’s attitude toward his work is primarily that of a philosopher; we are inclined to think that he saw his problem before he saw its possibilities for a story. And his problem is nothing less than the conflict of two irreconcilable civilizations. To grapple with so large a theme requires courage, but Mr. Cable has shown that he has not overestimated his powers.

The Nation,’’ also in a long review, points out that Cable is a literary artist of unusual powers. It maintains that his appearance in Southern literature, up till then rather neg­ ligible, is not to be lightly passed over. The pedigree chapters remind the critic of Thackeray’s Henry Esmond, a similarity certainly flattering to Cable. The theme of the book, he goes on to say, is the effect of slavery upon a tropical society habituated to the substitution of impulse for reasoning. “Wherever the effect of slavery upon the Creole society or the individual Creole is concerned it is admirably painted; it is suggested or shown by the writer in true dramatic manner, illustrated in the action or betrayed by the characters them­ selves.” The Bras-Coupe and Clemence episodes are, however, not to his taste. He thinks that one may expect more incisive power in Cable’s next work but that it would be “vain to look forward to anything more captivating”. The New York Times called the first novel of Cable’s “a wonderful romance”, the Baltimore Gazette declared that its author showed “the genius of a novelist of the first rank”, and the Boston Journal wrote; “Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it places it beyond doubt

* XXI, 159—161, November 1880. The review is anonymous but a letter from Boyesen to Cable, dated September 5, 1880, shows that Boyesen is its author. ’ XXXI, 415—416, December 9, 1880. t 1 * 156 that we have in Mr. Cable a novelist of positive originality, and of the very first quality.” ** In an editorial in Scribner’s Monthly^ Dr Holland wrote: “It cannot be disputed, however, thkt a new literary era is dawning upon the South. If we were called upon to name the two writers who, more than any others, within the last five years have brought most of performance and promise to Ame­ rican letters we should name Mrs. Burnett and George W. Cable.” He added that neither the Nprth nor the West had produced anything like them during that period. In the New Orleans Item Lafcadio Hearn praised The Grandissimes in no less than five editorials in 1879, 1880, and 1881.1® Many leading writers and prominent persons had a very high opinion of Old Creole Days and The Grandissimes. W il­ liam Dean Howells, after reading the novel, made haste to tell Cable how pleased he was with it.n It was a noble and beauti­ ful book, which had made his heart warm towards its author. He found the portrayal of the multitude of figures in it both delicate and unerring, and the book itself was thoroughly knit and perfectly clear, not confused in construction, as some critics had asserted. There are many proofs that Howells’s praise of the novel was not dictated by politeness but was really sincere. In 1882 he wrote to John Hay: “By the way, do you read Cable’s books? They are delicious; there is no more charming creation in fiction than Aufora Nancanou in The Grandissimes.” In 1887, defending Southern literature against a charge of its being narrow, he wrote: “Mr. Cable’s Grandis­ simes is large enough to reflect a civilization.” is The following

® Quoted from an advertisement in Cable' s The Silent South, New York. 1885. » XXII, 785—786, September, 1881. According to Tinker’s “Cable and the Cred les” they were published on the following dates; December 26, 1879, S eptember 26, October 27, December 18, 1880, and January 13, 1881. “ In a letter headed Belmont, October 2, 1881. Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, edited by Mildred Howe Is, I, 301—302. Mildred Howells, op. cit.. I, 312. ” Harper’s Magazine, LXXV, 639, September, 1887. 157

year he called it “one of the great novels of our time '.i^ And in Heroines of Fiction is he wrote that The Grandissimes seemed to him one of the few American fictions which one can think of without feeling the need of forbearance. It was “ample, yet shapely, picturesque in time and place, but essentially faithful to the facts of both, romantic in character but realistic in characterization ’. For love of this book Howells even intended to make the long journey to New Orleans but his strength, in later years, was not equal to it.i<* Mark Twain shared Howells’s enthusiasm about The Gran­ dissimes. Together they read aloud from it, and afterwards they “went about talking Creole all day’.*' In Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain speaks of Cable as “the South’s finest literary genius, the author of The Grandissimes”,^^ and in a letter to him he writes that one of his books, probably Madame Delphine, has made a deep impression on him; he had read it the night before, and the charm of it, and the pain of it, and the deep music of it were still pulsing through him. Mary Hallock Foote was another admirer of Cable’s work. She writes to him on January 4, 1883: “But let me continue long enough to say again what inexhaustible pleasure and deep profit (I hope) I find in your books. I read them in all moods and re-read them at intervals and find the humanity in them deeper than I can sound.” Sidney Lanier, in a letter to his brother, said: “Have you read Cable’s book, ‘The Gran­ dissimes’? It is a work of art, and he has a fervent and rare soul.” And in his announcement of a course on the English novel at Johns Hopkins University, he included this novel in a list of American novels he intended to discuss.^® Among other admirers of Cable’s Creole stories may be

” Harper’s Magazine, LXXVII, 801, October, 1888. ■s II, 235. A letter from Mildred Howells, his daughter, to Cable, dated June 9, 1920. ” A letter from Howells to Cable, dated March 7, 1882. See Kjell Ekstrom, “The Cable-Howells Correspondence”, Stadia Neophilologica, XXII, 53, 1950. ■» See p. 117. >» Dated July 17, 1881. Edwin Mims, Sidney Lanier. 158 mentioned Charles Dudley Warner, 21 Weir Mitchell, who considered The Grandissimes the bes[ American novel, 22 and John Greenleaf Whittier, who, wherJ meeting Cable for the first time, said: “I have read all thy stories, and I like them very much. Thee hast found an untrodden field of romance in New Orleans, and I think thee the writer whom we have so long waited to see come up in the South.” In England, there were many peo])le who valued Cable’s early volumes highly. There is evidence that several prominent writers were admirers of them. Osca Wilde paid a visit to Cable in New Orleans in 1882. “He is a great admirer of yours and very anxious to meet you,” a lady wrote to Cable on that occasion.24 Neil Munro confessed in a letter to Cable 25 that in all probability Old Creole Days had hud more to do with his attempt to write short stories than any other influence. George Meredith had read The Grandissimes and had long wanted to meet its author, as he told him when at last they met in 1898.28 James Barrie, when in America in 1896, went to see Cable in Northampton and also visited the scene of his stories. New Orleans. “To sit in a laundry and read The Grandissimes — that is the quickest way of reachipg the strange city of New Orleans,” he wrote. And the last chapter of that novel he considered to be “one of the pretti ;st love scenes in any language”.27

*' See for instance Bikld, op. cit., 94, footnot e 2. ” Undated letter from Mitchell to Cable. “ The Boston Herald, November 28, 1883. Quoted here from Arlin Turner’s “Whittier Calls on George W. Cable’ New England Quarterly, XXII, No. 1, 1949. Here is another item of evidence of Cable’s popularity. G. H. Clements, the artist, who was a friend and supporter of Cable’s, writes to him in an nndated letter: “If you happen to be afflicted with a fit of modesty it might cheer you to learn that a very clever Dr. of science and author, secretary of the Phila. Academy of sciences — I forget his name but he met you at Atlantic Cit/ — considers ‘The Gran­ dissimes’ the best American novel and the ‘Old Creole Days’ stories ‘gems’. A woman reader for one of the impor ant publishers says that in England the same opinion is held of the a jove novel. I re-read the short stories when cruising and think them of the best.” “ Mary A. Townsend in a letter of June 17, 1882. “ Dated August 4, 1898. “ Bikl^, op. cit., 224. ” Bookman, VII, 401—403, July 1898. 159

About Dr. Sevier the literary critics were not quite so enthusiastic but their reviews were on the whole favourable, it seems. In October, 1884, Marion Baker reported to Cable that he had seen only two unfavourable notices, one in the New York Tribune and the other in the Baltimore Sun. The bulk of the criticism of the novel was kindly, he wrote.^s The Atlantic Monthly said: He [Cable] has a quick apprehension of the physiognomy both of persons and places; he watches eagerly the dramatic,exhibition of life; he is concerned with the development of character. All this is discernible in his short stories, but when he is permitted the breadth and freedom of the novel he discloses the fact that over and above all this he is absorbed in the contemplation of the struggle which is going on in the world, between the forces of good and evil. In this he shows his kinship with the great moralists.

The magazine goes on to criticize the author’s treatment of the problems of poverty and labour in Dr. Sevier. It finds that he has not succeeded in making the persons and the action clearly carry the moral which lay in his own mind. After discussing his use of dialect, which it considers a little exag­ gerated, it concludes by indicating that, in the case of this novel, the author’s great natural gifts have been perplexed by a conflict between his ethical and his artistic nature and that the work has suffered as a result of this. The Critic wrote: “There can be but one opinion of ‘Dr. Sevier’; it is a beautiful story, told with an exquisite art of which the greatest charm is the simplicity.” It found, how­ ever, that the story lacks a central purpose. Going into details it had only praise to give. Narcisse, for instance, was more effective as a bit of Creole colouring than all the Grandissimes put together. The Saturday Review w rote: Those critics of American literature who are wont to complain that it is not sufficiently American and those American novelists who cannot find in America the color and form which they see easily enough in Europe may be recommended to read Mr. Cable’s ‘Dr. “ The letter is dated October 27, 1884. ” LV, 121—122, January 1885. •• Novem ber 8, 1884. Quoted by the Critic, VI, 71, February 7, 1885. 160

Sevier’ and Mr. Craddock’s ‘Where the B attle was Fought.’ ' * * Both are filled with local color, rank of their ative soil, soaked through and through -with Americanism.

In the New Orleans newspapers the artistic qualities of the novel were praised but the ideas put forward in it were criti- sized. The Picayune ^2 w rote: Mr. Cable is an artist. In our judgeln nt he is an artist rather than a philosopher. We know that he ha s many sound sentiments, and that he is a thinker; but it seems t us that he is sometimes too hasty in selecting his point of view, *** If we are not misin- formed Mr. Cable is not only convinced that African slavery was in itself, and in its effects, evil and on y evil, but that Southern civilization has still further concessions to make, which it is as yet unwilling to make, to the negro rac<

This leads the reviewer to defend slavery as a means of progress for the Negro. Later Cable’s words about the cause of the North being just ^3 brings forth this outburst: The Union is at peace to-day, and so let it be forever! But no misery of the past, no happiness of the present [las ever led, or can ever lead, the Southern people to a confession of treason. They are not before the bar of history pleading for l«iniency upon sentimental grounds.

In the Times-Democrat there appear(;d a review, anonymous but, as can be proved, written by Lafcadio Hearn.^^ Hearn says ; The whole plan, purpose, and style are imarked by a rare unique­ ness; — the chapters, each a little tableaii-vivant, reveal a fine study of certain phases of life treated for the first time by a singularly artistic pen; *** the description of Louisiana scenery and New Orleans localities sometimes exceeds in picturesque exquisiteness the best world-coloring Mr. Cable has yet given us.

The reviewer finds that Dr. Sevier is more artistic than The Grandissimes. Old Creole Days is, however, in his opinion,

» July 28, 1884. ” Dr. Sevier, 377. It appeared on October 8, 1884. Three days later Marion Baker sent Cable the notice, telling him in his letter that one of the editors had intended to write a vicious review of the noA el on account of its anti- Southern tone but that Hearn and he had persuaded him out of it. “Hearn wrote the notice,” Baker adds, “but does not care for you to know. He is hopelessly down upon you.” 161 the best of them all. The dialect, he thinks, gets tiresome in such a long work as Dr. Sevier. Furthermore, Cable has not always known how to subordinate detail to general purpose. The reviewer also warns Cable not to make “side-thrusts at political and social ideas which he himself has fought in defense of”. Now, Hearn was not a man to defend the ideas for which the South had fought in the Civil War. Considering this fact and the style of his warning, one may suspect that he was himself making a side-thrust, at Cable. On the other hand, the warning may have been dictated by considerations of Southern public opinion. From different quarters Cable received evidence that the readers appreciated his second novel. Annie Fields, for in­ stance, wTote:33 “Miss Jewett and I have been feasting upon the last number of Dr. Sevier. I w'ish I could tell you fitly w’hat delight your creations give us!” The value of Cable’s work was early recognized by several universities. In 1882 he was invited by the University of Mississippi to address its graduating class, and in the same year Washington and Lee University gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, in recognition of his ‘ claims as an accomplished Southern litterateur”.*® in 1883 Yale Uni­ versity conferred upon him the honorary degree of Master of Arts, ‘ with the desire of recognizing publicly the eminent success which you have achieved in embalming in literature a unique phase of American social life which is rapidly passing away.” And Johns Hopkins University honoured him by inviting him to give a series of lectures.®® From the evidence already presented it would appear that Cable’s early work w'as, on the whole, favourably received also in the South.There was, however, one exception, and

The letter is dated only July 28. « Bikl^, op. cit., 85. The communication is dated July 2, 1883 and signed Franklin B. Dexter. The invitation was made in the autumn of 1882 and the lectures were given in March, 1883. ” One authority, Henry P. Dart, in his article “George W. Cable” (.Louisiana Historical Quarterly, VIII, 647—656, October, 1925), maintains that the majority of “the reading and thinking people of New Orleans 11 162

an important one; the Creoles objee'ted in the most violent way to Cable’s treatment of them. In 1880, after the publication of T/ic Grandissimes, came a first violent attack on Cable in A Critical Dialogue between Aboo and Caboo on A New Book, an anonymous pamphlet generally ascribed to Adrien Emmaiuel Rouquette. In the preface the “editor” states that the dialogue was found in manuscript by a rambler at West En orth, were copied into the New Orleans Republican, “the subsidized org an of the dominant party whose white supporters were but a minor faci or in the organization and a still smaller fraction of the white populatio 1 of Louisiana”. But when the stories were collected, Henry P. Dart write s, there was “still no local disagreement in the verdict that recognized the charm and interest and even the genius of the creator of ‘Old Creole Days’ ”. These statements seem to be contradictory; furthermore, they are undocumented. 163 the olden customs, habits, manners and idiosyncrasies of the Southern Creole population of Louisiana therein so slanderously misrepresented; and yet, in reality, so high spirited, so genteel and captivating, in its polished civility, noble bearing and dignified character, although the rude storm of misfortune has swept over its once so opulent and princely homes.

This is one of the few comparatively sober paragraphs of the pamphlet. Here is another, interesting as an item of evi­ dence that Cable’s two earliest books were received, at first, favourably even in New Orleans. Aboo says: Alas! alas! even New Orleans, the “HYBRID CITY,” as scornfully called by him, joined with the North in trumpeting his praise and strewing with flowers and laurel leaves the path that leads-to fame; yes, even New Orleans, without a sense of honor, without a blush of shame!

For the rest the whole dialogue is filled with the most un­ balanced outbursts against Cable; He is, according to Aboo, a prolific and evil-eyed caricaturist, “something of the wasp, the caterpillar and Darwin’s typical ape” for be “sings while flying, befouls as he crawls, and plays wonderful freaks, plumes himself, pranks up”. A few lines further down the same Aboo finds that this “magnissime Scn'fe-bler of Charle­ magne Schrib-ner" is an over-bold, flippant dwarf. He is also, still according to Aboo, a Cablishissime romanticist, an ill- natured alien, and he is'reminiscent of “the chatty magpie, the cold, sheeny serpent, the slimeinbedded alligator, shedding pitiful tears”. To Caboo he is “a crafty gullcatcher, a sleek, shrewd pedlar of novelties”, and his novel is a sensational catchpenny. Aboo thinks that Cable has got his historical information from “the babbling lips of some old negresses, reeling on the brink of Eternity”. Caboo tells Aboo to write and publish, adding: “If he leaps on you, though he be backed by hell, and hell’s legions, I will hailstone him into night’s dismal dungeon, made darker by clouds of moping owls and bats.” The pamphlet ends with a scurrilous poem in the Creole dialect, in which Cable is accused of participating in voodoo dances and of having children by a Negress., Even now, 70 years after its publication, the pamphlet 164 makes a painful impression on the reader. Its plumpness, its cheap puns, and its atmosphere of blind, unreasonable hate reflect unfavourably on its author, \lvas he representative of the Creoles, Cable’s presentation of them must be considered flattering indeed \ During 1881 the animosity against jCable among the Creoles rose, and when Joseph Pennell arrived in New Orleans in January, 1882, he found him “the mlost cordially hated little man”, in the city and unable to introduce him to better-class Creoles.^i When, in 1882, the Russian professor Kowaledski visited New Orleans, he witnessed at a party how the President of the Athenee refused to shake hands, with Cable, “giving as a reason for his action the harm idone by Cable to the Creoles.” A representative of the Athenee characterized the Russian’s account of this incident as a wholesale literary fabrication,^^ but it is hard to find a! reason why we should ascribe it entirely to the professor’s ci^eative imagination. In L’Abeille, the only New Orleans newspaper published in French, there were many thrusts at Cable. Placide Canonge wrote some editorials, of which that of March 15, 1885, con­ tained the most severe attack.^^ At a time when Cable had aroused a storm of indignation all over the South by his articles on the convict lease system and on the Negro question, on April 2^, 1885, Charles Gayarre delivered a lecture at Tulane University in New Orleans on “The Creoles of History and the Creoles of Romance”.<5 The eighty-year-old historian, famous for his History of Louisiana, devoted the first part of his lecture to proving that the Creoles

" On January 13, 1881, R. W. Gilder reported to Cable that Roswell Smith was a good deal concerned by the animosity shown in the Critical Dialogue. “If you ever think it wise to come north,” Gilder added, “you know where you will find friends.” *' Elizabeth Robins Pennell, op. cit., 56. « Crilic, III, 316—317, July 28, 1883. « Ibid., August 25, 1883. “ E. L. Tinker, “Cable and the Creoles”, American Literature, V, 313—326, January, 1934. “ Published as a pamphlet; a copy in the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, New Orleans. 165 were not of mixed blood. He tried to demonstrate that the early settlers of Louisiana did not consist of such bad ele­ ments as those “a certain well known writer” had pictured. He forgot, however, to mention what he himself had written in his History of Louisiana about the immigrants of the 1720’s. In this work, after mentioning the reports reaching France about the bad conditions, climatic and otherwise, in Louisiana and the consequent difficulty to find persons willing to emi­ grate there, he had said: However, the Western or Mississippi Company (headed by John Law,) having contracted the obligation to colonize Louisiana and to transport thither within a fixed time a certain number of emigrants, found itself under the necessity, in order to comply with the terms of its contract, to have recourse to the most iniquitous and unlawful means. As it was indispensable that there should be emigration — when it ceased to be voluntary, — it was necessary that it should be forced. Thus violence was resorted to, and throughout France agents were dispatched to kidnap all va­ grants, beggars, gipsies, or people of the like description, and women of bad repute. *** The dangerous rival, the hated wife or trouble­ some husband, the importuning creditor, the prodigal son, or the too long-lived father, the one who happened to be an obstacle to an expected inheritance, or crossed the path of the wealthy or of the powerful, became the victims of their position, and were soon hurried away with the promiscuous herd of thieves, prostitutes, vagabonds, and all sorts of wretches of bad fame who had been swept together, to be transported to Louisiana.^®

Speaking of Galvez and Miro, the Spanish governors, both of whom married Creole women, Gayarre said: A singular infatuation on the part of those men, and of almost all the Spanish officers and dignitaries of high rank who came to Louisiana during a period of about thirty-four years to in­ variably ally themselves to so abject a population as is described by a certain literary dime speculator — a population whose best men, according to the same authority, are bullies, knaves and fools, with the brains of a jackass, the heart of an alligator, and the tongue of a gibberish monkey — and whose best women, born of lawful wedlock, are inferior in every respect, to the colored bastard issue of libertinism and concubinage! Governor Miro seems to have entertained on that subject, as I will show, views very different

*• Quoted from The World from Jackson Square, edited by E. S. Basso, 16— 17. 166 from those of a modern sentimentalist, who, being color-blind himself, wants to make the world believe that black is white and white is black.

Gayarre went on to mention a proclaination in which Gover­ nor Miro declared that “the idleness of free negro, mulatto, and quadroon women, resulting from their living on inconti­ nence and libertinism, must no longer be tolerated; that they must renounce their mode of living and betake themselves to honest labor”. This proclamation is, according to Gayarre, a proof of the superiority of the white women of that time to those of coloured blood. However, he failed to see its implica­ tions as to the morals of the white male population. For he does not answer the questions who were the parents of the women of mixed blood and who were their “customers”. To the latter question we receive an answer in Travels in America by Thomas Ashe, who visited New Orleans in the first decade of the 19th century. The brown women there, he tells us, are very numerous and they are mistresses of the whites, “to the married and unmarried, and nearly to, all strangers who resort to the town”.47 Evidently, the Creoles were not quite so vir­ tuous as Gayarre would have his audience believe. Gayarre went on to stress the noble ancestry of many of the Creoles. I say that there is more than one individual among us, in an humble position, particularly since the late war, whose ancestors were knights who fought as Crusaders in the fields of Palestine; and others could prove that they are nobles from time immemorial by the grace of God, and not by the favoi* of any prince — which, by the by, is the highest degree of nobility, far above any manu­ factured mushroom ducal title. I Does not Gayarre himself give an example here of the Creole pride in ancestry that Cable ridiculed? Turning to a detailed criticism of The Grandissimes, Gayarre admitted that this was the only one 1 of Cable’s works that he had read.^® Furthermore, it appears from his lecture that

See The World from Jackson Square, edited by E. S. Basso, 90. " In a letter from St. Louis, dated May 4, 1'885, one J. A. Macon wrote to the editor of the Century: “Mr Charles Gayarr^, in denying the accuracy of Mr Cable’s portraiture of Creole! types, admits at the be- 167

he had studied this novel far from thoroughly. Thus, for instance, Joseph Frowenfeld was renamed James by him. To serve his own purpose he also took great liberties in describing certain episodes in the book. Thus, for instance, he summarized the opening scene in a way apt to create a false impression with anyone not familiar with the novel. When describing Frowenfeld’s arrival in New Orleans, he wondered why Cable called it a hybrid city. “Is it because it was inhabited only by mulattoes and mulattresses? Or is it in anticipation of what Mr. Cable hopes it to become when black men will marry white women, and white men marry blacks?” Here he is, of course, extremely unfair towards Cable. There is nothing in his work to indicate that Cable was in favour of miscegenation, and it is very difficult to see how Gayarre can have found anything in The Grandissimes pointing to such an opinion in its author. It is fairly obvious that in calling New Orleans a hybrid city Cable was thinking of its being both Creole and “American”. In discussing what Doctor Keene in the novel calls the Creoles’ “preposterous, apathetic, fantastic, suicidal pride” which is “as lethargic and ferocious as an alligator”, Gayarre made this personal attack on Cable: I assume the responsibility of declaring openly in their [the Creoles’] name that they do not believe him susceptible of any preposterous, apathetic, fantastic, and suicidal pride in business transactions and lucrative speculations; that they do not suspect him of being lethargic where self-interest speaks even in the feeblest voice;

In conclusion Gayarre criticized some of the Creole charac­ ters of the novel. The two half-brothers, the white and the coloured Honore, were, of course, an eyesore to him, and he found Madame Nancanou to be “silly, undignified and not ginning of his lecture that he has never read any of the novelist’s writings except “The Grandissimes.” We have here a refreshing instance of Creole naiveti a’nd candor, — when a grave lecturer, — himself a Creole, — after formally assuming a serious task, begins the work with an admis­ sion that shows him to be disqualified for what he proposes to do. In fact, Mr Gayarr^, by exhibiting himself as a typical Creole, is bearing strong testimony to the substantial accuracy of Mr Cable's characters.” 1 2 168 overburdened with too heavy a load of high-toned morality”. Summarizing his opinion of The Grandissimes, he said that “from the beginning to the end, this work represents the whole creole population as the basest and the most stupid that ever crawled in the mud of this earth”. Something about Gayarre’s earlier relations to Cable should, I think, be added to this survey of his lecture on “The Creoles of History and the Creoles of Romance”. Letters to Cable from Gayarre indicate that as late as February, 1883, the latter had been a guest in Cable’s home and that before that time they had assisted each other in different ways and had been on very friendly terms. Thus, for instance, when Cable was pre­ paring a biography of Gilmore Simms, Gayarre had sent him letters of his from that writer, and Cable had given Gayarre letters of introduction when the latter visited the N o r th .^ s The last letter from Gayarre to Cable is dated February 3, 1883. There is a letter of May 21 of that year from Cable to Marion Baker that gives us a clue to the problem why Gayarre changed his attitude towards his younger colleague. Here Cable writes:

Dear Marion; I have just read Judge Gayarre’s letter on Wilkinson. He gives the young man a mild purgative that I think ought to correct his liver, if anything can. Just in one place the Judge drops a remark which is capable of a construction that I cannot believe he intended. If I did so believe it would fill me with distress as coming from one whose chivalrous determination to be just always and to all has commanded my admiration and won my lasting regard. He writes near the close of his article — “Why wait "* until Mr. Cable has copied my statements and republished them as his own?” I believe that Judge Gayarre esteems me too highly to intend what this question can be made to imply. A magazine article setting forth facts of history simply as such is not expected to make acknowledgement of its authorities unless they are new and un­ known. The Ms of my original census report is positively loaded with foot-note references to authorities in which no other name appears so often as that of “Gayarre”; but the government editor left all that out as unnecessary. ‘ * *

“ See letters from Gayarrfi to Cable of October 27, 1880, January 10, March 30, August 5 and 8, 1882, and Fabruary 3, 1883. In the Cable Collection, Tulane University. New Orleans. 169

By that time. May, 1883, four of Cable’s six articles on the Creoles of Louisiana had been published in the Century Maga­ zine. Those articles seem to have evoked bitterness in Gayarre. It is easy to imagine his way of reasoning. Here a young writer was earning a lot of money on articles based, as he thought, mainly on his, Gayarre’s, research, while he himself was fighting poverty.^i In “A Few Words about the Creoles of Louisiana”, an address delivered at the Ninth Annual Convention of the Louisiana Educational Association,Professor Alcee Fortier defended the Creoles against “a certain writer” who had maligned and misrepresented them. They did not lack energy, he maintained. They had cleared the land, they had curbed the devastating power of the Mississippi, they had fought and repulsed the Indians, they had established sugar refineries, and they had managed plantations, larger in area fhan some German principalities. They were not rich, but they had kept intact the honour and name of their fathers and they were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows and bringing up large families of girls and boys, teaching them that labour is honourable and sacred. Fortier criticized the Nancanou ladies in The Grandissimes whom he found to be insignificant dolls and superstitious idiots. He- advised his audience to go to New Orleans in the winter to see, at the French Opera House, hundreds of true Creole women, charming, intellectual and educated. In stores and schools, they would find, he said, delicate Creole girls earning their own living. Fortier, however, did not consider the facts that in T/ie Grandissimes Cable had, to some extent, at least, tried to draw a picture of the New Orleans of the early 19th century and that the education and the social con­ ditions of the Creole women might have changed since then. Another Creole, J. L. Peytavin, published an article entitled “Refutation des erreurs de M. Geo. W. Cable au sujet des Creoles” in Comptes-rendus de I’Athenee Louisianais for July,

Charles Aldrich, in “Louisiana’s Veteran Author” (Critic, XIII, 29 —30, January 18, 1890), tells us about Gayarre’s illness and economic difficulties in his old age. ” Printed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1892. 170

1888. His argument is rather illogical. He resents Cable’s state­ ment that the Creoles call other citizens, of the United States “Americains”; but in discussing this question he admits that the Creoles distinguish between people of Latin origin, Creoles, and people of Anglo-Saxon origin whom they call “American”. It is hard, indeed, to see the difference between his standpoint and Cable’s! Thfe Creoles, Peytavin goes on to say, are more American in their attitude and conduct than a man who “s’est revetu de I’habit ecclesiastique de I’apotre des nfegres”. Of course, Peytavin finds it un-American to espouse the cause of a large group of American citizens, the Negroes. The resentment of the Creoles against Cable undoubtedly diminished as time went by, but it did not disappear. When James Barrie visited New Orleans in 1896, several Creole ladies called upon him as soon as he had arrived, to warn him. Against what? Against believing Mr. Cable. They came singly, none knew of the visits of the others, but they had heard what brought me there. *** The tale was that Mr. Cable misrepresented them; Creoles are not and never were “like that”, especially the ladies. * * * I said I supposed it must be so, no ladies in the flesh could be quite so delicious as the Creole ladies of Mr. Cable’s imagination.”

In 1921, Joseph Pennell wrote from New Orleans to Cable:®* “I realized yesterday how full and true your work was — and that you were remembered from the old days and not for­ gotten — or forgiven.” In 1934, Edward L. Tinker, in his article “Cable and the C r e o l e s ” ,B5 reported that at that time the animosity of the Creoles against Cable persisted as fierce and malevolent as ever. And during my stay in New Orleans in 1949 I was told from many quarters that Cable was still neither forgotten nor forgiven by the Creoles. There is, however, evidence that th^ Creole front against Cable was not unbroken. In Standard HiUory of New Orleans,^^ published in 1900, A. G. Druno, in an .article on “Literature and Art”, asserted upon personal knowledge that there were

“ Bookman, VII, 401-^03, July, 1898. “ His letter is dated December 8. “ American Literature, V, 313—326, January, 1934. “ Edited by Henry Rightor, 368. 171

Creoles who had read Cable’s books with pleasure and who recognized his portraiture as not being entirely unfaithful. In 1886 a Creole, A. Derlonde, asserted Cable by letter that he and his wife had read Cable’s books with interest. In 1909 Cable received a similar letter from a Creole lady, Olivia Blanchard, who called herself “a representative of the people of whom you so chafmingly write”.®® James B. Guthrie, his friend and lawyer, told Cable of another case in point. He wrote under date of October 14, 1886: I persuaded Jeanna Bruligny my cousin’s wife to read Cable and then criticize him as much as she pleased. She began with OC Days — grew very much interested — one day she said to me “I’m so sorry I ever talked against George Cable. I was an ignorant fool.” She is now reading Grandissimes and enjoying it immensely. She said to me last night “Oh Cousin James this book is delightful. I recognize so many of my friends in it. He is so true, George Cable.” Now Jeanne is not the woman to be easily won over from her positions of prejudice but you have captured her completely and she is lost in wonder how you ever came to catch the flavor of tire Creole. *** These Brulignys are the most advanced Creoles I know.

Marion Baker wrote to Cable about a Creole lady who spoke of him always in the highest terms and always defended him in company. And on another occasion 6<> he told him about two Creole ladies, neighbours of his, who had defended him heartily against Grace King. G. H. Clements reported to him about members of a Creole family, the Toledanos, having spoken warmly about him. And when Cable visited New Orleans in 1915, he was received with enthusiasm by many Creoles.®*

» Dated March 16, 1886. ” Her letter is dated November 12, 1909. “ On August 31, 1885. •• In a letter dated March 28, 1898. '• In a letter headed New Orleans, 1891. « BikU, op. cit., 290— 292.

1 2 ★ CHAPTER XIV

CABLE AND THE CREOLES: SOME ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM

Did Cable give an accurate picture of the Creoles? Was his rendering of their dialect correct? Was his presentation of them intended as an attack on them? Those are questions that present themselves to the student of his early Creole stories. To give a definite answer to them is, however, very difficult. The spokesmen of the Creoles maintained, as we have seen, that Cable’s description of them was in every — or almost every — way false. There were, however, as we have also seen, some Creoles who held a different opinion, but they seem to have been in the minority. Since, according to his own word. Cable had contemporary Creoles for his' models, one way to judge of the realism of his Creole characters would be after the picture we can make of those Creoles. His Creole critics seem to have taken it for granted that he described contemporary Creoles — “We are not like that,” they said. The problem is, however, made more complicated by the fact that in many cases Cable may have changed his models to make them fit better into the historic milieu; or he may have created wholly imaginary figures or drawn characters after people he had read about during his studies of history. Now it seems impossible to say which characters belong to each of these categories, and it would be as wrong to judge all of them as Creoles of the time in which the stories are laid as it would be to consider them all to be Creoles of the 1870’s or 1880’s. Since I do not presume to solve this problem, I shall content 173 myself with presenting some further evidence i on this question.2 Here is an extract from a letter » to Cable from George Bat- tin, U. S. Consul in the Kingdom of Wurtemberg, who, being married to a Creole lady and having been a resident of New Orleans, may be considered a competent judge in this matter:

My dear sir I have just finished reading “The Grandissinies,” — and though I have never had the pleasure of meeting you personally, I trust you will permit me as one who has lived in New-Orleans and' married a creolc wife — to express to you my very great satis­ faction with the picture you have drawn. During the five or six years that I passed in that dreamy clime, how often have I wished that it were in me to be the chronicler of the peculiar traditions, usages, and dialect of that Louisiana Creole element which is fast becoming a thing of the past. Strange that no one has before you risen up to record for the future reader all the peculiarities, chivalrous, pathetic and comical of this race. Your Raoul Innerarity — for instance — is a picture of a type that every dweller in New Orleans knows. Honore f.m.c. is one whom everybody can recognize — in short, I cannot resist my inclination to write and not only congratulate you on your truthful portrayal, but express my satisfaction that you have taken the subject in hand, and written a record which it would have been a pity to leave iuirecorded. I perhaps ought to add that my knowledge of the subject was gleaned not only through the association, (Frenchtown, Pass Christian, and Biloxi) into which I married, but as reporter on the N. O. Crescent up to the time of its discontinuance in 1869. *“

An acquaintance of Cable’s wife, Henry Whitteipan, wrote to him 4 that he had read his “delineation of Creole character”, which he had found “remarkably true to nature”. As he slated that he had lived for a number of years in the Third District of New Orleans, he may also be supposed to be a competent critic in this case. One Charles A. Jackson also testified to the realism of Cable’s Creole characters. Writing from San

' See also the end of the preceding chapter (pp. 170—171). ' I want to stress the fact that I have found no non-Creole denying the accuracy of Cable’s presentation of the Creoles. ’ Headed Stuttgart, November 29, 1880. ‘ In a letter dated August, 1886. 174

Francisco® he said: “I have long been an admirer of your realistic tales of the South, the more so as it was my lot to live in New Orleans most of the time from 62 to 69 and so I am well fitted to judge of their accuracy and fidelity to nature and man as they were in N.O. in those days.” In the Boston Literary World of January 24, 1885, there appeared an article by W. S. Kennedy, entitled “The New Orleans of George W. Cable”. Kennedy, who, after reading Cable’s stories, had gone to New Orleans to study Creole life, writes: * * * the essential facts of the representations * are true and sharply accentuated. I have heard from different Creoles bits of speech which were familiar from my having met with them in The Gran- dissimes or Old Creole Days. You soon discover that the class feeling, the ancient national antipathy of French and Saxon, makes of Canal street — separating the French from the American quarter — a line of demarcation as distinct as that which divides the water of the Mississippi from those of the Gulf. The Creoles are proud and poor; hold themselves aloof — have their own paper — L’Abeille de la Nouvelle Orleans — and will read no other; and have formed a society for the preservation of the French language. They rate English, rarely speaking it with willingness, or without a shrug of the shoulders.

Here we have an unprejudiced critic from the North, who, having made a special study of the subject, came to the con­ clusion that in essentials Cable’s picture of the Creoles is true. To the unprogressiveness of the Creoles, of which Cable had given instances in his books, Charles W. Young, a former reporter Ofi the staff of the Picayune, testified by writing to Cable “Honore G. is a fine character — in some ways — though I should imagine there were not many so progressive in his day — there are few enough now.” A Creole correspondent to the New brleans Times-Demo- crai ® w rote: I acknowledge the truthfulness of the Crec^le characters as far as he [Cable] depicts them. I concede that they are vivid, living;

‘ On October 15, 1893. • I.e. of the Creoles in Cable’s stories. ’ Under date of September 22,' 1880. ® Quoted by the Critic, IV, 298, June 21, 1884. 175 that I seem to recognize the individuals; but I protest at such being raised above their proper level, and made to appear as representa­ tive types of any other than the class the author has chosen to use for purposes of fiction.

This is interesting as being — as far as I know — the only public admission by a Creole of that time that there existed such Creoles as Cable depicted. In a letter to Cable from a member of the Soniat family * there is a description of an old Creole lady who spems to beat the most eccentric Creole ever portrayed by Cable. Here is an extract from that letter: I wish you knew some of the old creoles I do, there is one old lady in our family who knows everything concerning everybody who lives, or has lived below Canal Street within this century, she could furnish you material for your brain to embroider on forever. Within the same square resides another “antique” who came up town six years ago to call on me, it was the first time she had “crossed the Rubicon” (Canal Street) in fifteen years, and I am sure she has not seen “le haut de la ville” since, it is an unknown region to her. I can hear her now “Quel voyage! quel voyage! II a bien fallu que ce soit vous que je desirais voir pour que je fasse ce trajet, j’y ai passe des seniaines, et hier au soir j’ai passe la nuit blanche. Je n’ai pas ferme I’oeil a I’idee de le voyage [sic], il m’a fallu un guide pour arriver ici, ah! mais j’aimerais mieux aller a la Baie! ***” Those old folks are fossils of a past age and are as different in opinions and ways from the creole society lady of the present as can be; but if I wanted anecdotes of the past, good gumbo or hard common sense advice these are the ones I would apply to. *' * The Creoles are a peculiar, a very peculiar people, they are made up of opposites.

G. H. Clements, the New Orleans artist, also testified to the existence of eccentric and ignorant Creoles by writing in a letter to Cable You would no doubt enjoy visiting some friends and relatives of mine, you will love them and perhaps use them. Some especially, of dense ignorance, not capable of spelling their names, but so full of innate goodness, morality, naive affection — and others there

• The letter is undated and signed only E. A. B. S., but there is another letter in the same hand signed Elve A. B. Soniat. '• Dated March 31, 1881. 176

are — strange characters, I tell you — you must meet them and turn creole long enough to catch their oddities, and, perhaps, some legends.

In view of the evidence presented it seems incredible that Cable’s picture of the Creoles is as false as some of his Creole critics would have us believe. This does not preclude the possibility that, for artistic or other reasons, Cable may have exaggerated certain traits in them. Neither must it be forgotten that Cable did not write about those few Creoles who went to Paris for their education or about the drawing-room life of the uppermost Creole society. His choice of characters from all other walks of life, being a break against the literary tradi­ tion of the Creoles, or indeed of the whole South, was, of course, shocking to the leading Creoles. Was Cable’s rendering of the English spoken by the Creoles accurate? According to Charles Gayarr^, one of the most monstrous absurdities of The Grandissimes was the language Cable put into the mouths of the Creoles.

If Mr. Cable [said Gayarre in his lecture on “The Creoles of History and the Creoles of Romance”] had represented the most distinguish­ ed of our creole families as having forgotten to speak French, and as using only the jargon which the negroes had constructed out of that language, the invention would have far exceeded the limits of those liberties which fancy in its wildest flights may be permitted to take with common sense. But when he makes them prefer, not the French, not the creole negro patois, but the broken English of the negroes of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, etc., the perversion or depravity of his intellect becomes overpowering and incomprehensible."

” Heturniiij; to this subject towards the end of the lecture, Gayarre said that he thought he had found an explanation why Cable made the Creoles speak this “broken, mutilated africanized English of the black man”. “Was it his secret intention”, Gayarri said, “to produce the im­ pression on his readers in his own sly and covert ways that the creoles are instinctively attracted, by a sort of magnetic influence, to every thing that is low, base and impure, as a natural effect of that Gallic reckless­ ness which, since the foundation of the colony, was the cause of their ignoble descent from the ill specimens of three races — Indian, African and French prostitutes?” 177

It is very difficult to judge now in this matter, no linguistic work, as far as I have been able to find out, having been made to elucidate it. It is, however, evident that Cable made no attempt to reconstruct the English of the Creoles of the early nineteenth century but took the artistic liberty of putting into their mouths the English of contemporary Creoles. Now it is hard to imagine that his rendering of their language was wholly false. He had a very fine ear for music, and it is known that he was able to write down from memory melodies he had heard. It seems probable that his ear for languages’was equally acute. In his notebook we find many instances of his having written down dialectal peculiarities overheard by him. I have also found some evidence that Cable’s rendering of the English of the Creoles was not so incorrect as Gayarre maintained. In a review of Old Creole Days in the New Orleans Picayune we read the following: “The careful rendering of the dialect reveals patient study of living models; and to any reader whose ear is accustomed to the broken English, as heard in the parts of our city every day, its truth to nature is striking.” >2 This reviewer, being a New Orleans journalist, must be supposed to be a competent judge in this question. Another New Orleans journalist, Charles W. Young, wrote this to Cable;i3 “ ‘The Grandissimes’ is immense. * * * And the dialect. I could almost fancy I was once more among my old friends in the Second District (right about that am I not?) I used to have a great many Creole friends down on Esplanade Street and there­ abouts.” Here, again, is evidence in favour of the accuracy of Cable’s rendering of Creole speech given by a man, who, hav­ ing had many Creole friends, may be considered a competent critic. G. H. Clements, who was well acquainted with the New Orleans Creoles, also praised Cable’s rendering of their Eng­ lish. “’Tis amazing how you catch their idioms,” he wrote to Cable in 1881.He went on to tell him about an old aunt of his who thought that Cable greatly exaggerated the pecu­

Quoted from Cable’s The Silent South, New York, 1885. In a letter headed Stratford, Canada, September 22, 1880. '• On March 31. 12 178 liarities of the Creoles’ speech; “we’d read a bit of dialogue to her, she’d fume: “tees not so, he naver hyar peeple talk so.’” Ten years later i® he gave evidence that some Creoles had not yet learned to master the English language. Then he wrote to Cable: Now that they are learning English they fairly gloat over the less- favored ones. Mina’s sister said to me at dinner last night, “you are sober” — of course what do you expect? — “well I notice you were sober last night, too, you took no ham”. She explained that she meant ! was temperate in eating. “Not for Meester Cable make de creole to talk so — is’s think we is niggers!” In Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans and Environs, published in 1885 and consisting of articles by many well-known New Orleans writers and journalists,we read on p. 149: “Try speaking English to any of the dwellers in this neighborhood and one is answered in caressing accents and delicious dialect' that make so large a part of the charm of Cable’s books.” Though the writer of this sentence is ano­ nymous, it may be supposed that, having been chosen to contribute to this guide-book, he was a person well acquainted with New Orleans conditions. A correspondent to the Critic from Los Angeles wrote that a lady acquaintance of his considered that Cable’s rendering of Creole speech could not have been better done. The opinion of this woman, he stated, bore the weight of twenty years residence in one of the famous houses of New Orleans, where she had daily entertained the best of Creole society.*^ Of course, not too much importance can be attributed to evidence of this kind given by an anonymous lady, but it seems worth mentioning as a corroboration of more solid evidence. Marion Baker, the New Orleans journalist, who can certainly be considered to have been familiar iWth the speech of the Creoles, thought the dialect in “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” inimitable and absolutely perfect. “I often wonder,” he wrote to Cable,i8 “how you ever got it downiso fine.”

In a letter headed New Orleans, 1891. '• The writers are anonymous but in his introduction Cable mentions several of them by name. ” Critic, XX, 432—433, December 30, 1893. '* Under date of March 28, 1898. 179

One correspondent of Cable’s, Gabriella M. Thompson, told him that she had read Old Creole Days so many times that the figures in it had become friends of hers. And she Went on to say: That these friends speak in broken English, in so many instances, makes them all the more lifelike. During my school days, spent for the most part in St. James Parish, where there were only seven or eight of us “Americans” — as we were styled — among 76 or 80 Creole pupils, I had ample opportunity to hear every grade and variety of French-English that one could imagine, and when I read your perfect recital of their efforts to master our language, your books have a value that only we of Louisiana and New Orleans can appreciate fully.'®

Another correspondent of Cable’s, Katharine Girling, of Chicago, told him 20 that during a visit to New Orleans she had heard Professor Alcee Fortier deliver a lecture. Here is an extract from her letter: While Professor Fortier is educated and therefore speaks carefully and well, even his polished speech showed the scars where odd branches had been lopped off. Rob away his polish and the sound of the Creole dialect would evidently follow. * * * We took notes with these results. He omitted the “penult” in such words as seats, parts, and the final t in most, the ch sound overcame him in such and much, the r was torn out of “pobably”, the u of monument became i, cruelty was cooelty. * * * It was natural that his English should sound like the English of a Frenchman but he said it didn’t. He said the Creoles speak better English than the Americans and that Paris admits that they speak better French than the Parisians.

Although we know nothing about this correspondent’s quali­ fications as a linguist, it seems evident that Alcde Fortier did not speak entirely faultless English. And such being the case, how can we expect the English of the less educated Creoles to have been perfect? Still another correspondent of Cable’s wrote :2i “Our friend Prof Aldrich of Tulane Univ. tells us that a handsome Creole woman told him at a reception lately that Cable represents

'• H er letter is headed New O rleans, May 16, 1906. " In an undated letter. Anna Richardson in a letter dated January 3, 1907. 180 that we do not speak the English co'eectly! (This is literal.)” Here again is an example of a Creole who believes herself to speak perfect English, while in fact her English is both ungrammatical and badly pronounced. There is also evidence that Sidney Lanier held a very high opinion of Cable’s ability to render dialect in his fiction. In 1880 Allen Redwood wrote to Cable :22 “But you must admit Sidney Lanier to evidence upon a point concerning which he is peculiarly fitted to testify — the phonetical accuracy of your dialect study. *** Well, he says, you are the o n ly m an w ho has mastered the so u n d s of dialect.” This evidence cannot be said to have p ro v e d the accuracy of Cable’s rendering of the Creoles’ English; but in view of the evddence jiresented, it seems hard to believe that it was a fabrication of Cable’s as Creole critics maintained. However, only after extensive linguistic research can we hope to give definite judgement in this question. W as Cable’s presentation of the Creoles in his early fiction intended as an attack on them? Gayarre, Fortier, and other spokesmen of the Creoles were obviously convinced that such was the case. But many critics in the North wondered at the furious Creole reaction to Cable’s Creole stories, as they thought that Cable had given a most charming picture of Creole life. Many of the thrusts at the Creoles, in O ld C reole D a y s particularly, are, it is true, woven into the fabric of the stories in such an artistic way that they may easily escape a less careful reader. But the reader who looks below the sur­ face of romantic plots in a colourful milieu will notice them. Such a reader was Hjalmar H. Boyesen who wrote in a review of The Grandissimes:^^ In fact the state of affairs in Louisiana in 1804 is so nearly parallel with the state of affairs to-day, or at all levents previous to 1876, that to all intents and purposes the book is a study (and a very profound and striking one) of Southern society during the period of reconstruction. Accordingly, we cannot help suspecting Mr. Cable of a benevolent intention to teach liis Southern countrymen some fundamental lessons of society and government, while osten­ sibly he is merely their dispassionate historian. Whether the Creole U nder date of Septem ber 14. « Scribner’s Monthly, XXI, 159—161. 181 gentlemen whom Mr. Cable characterizes with such admirable vigor and distinctness are capable of accepting a lesson, even though it involves the very problem of their existence, is a question which we dare not decide. The fact is that Cable was as much a reformer as a novelist. In “My Politics” we can follow the development of his ideas on the social problems of the South. The experiences of his boyhood — the poverty of the family, the outbreak of the war, the upheaval of the whole social system of the South — in combination with the strict Presbyterianism inculcated into him by his devout mother had early awaked in him the impulse to take part in the educational work of the mission school of his Church. The years as a newspaper reporter had given him further insight into the issues at stake and had made him eager to do something for the betterment of his city. During the 1870’s his reformatory zeal was led into the channels of creative writing. Into his early stories and his first novel he put all the pent-up indignation that, on account of the poli­ tical situation in the city, could find no other outlet. The predominating problem in New Orleans at the time when the Old Creole Days stories were written and T he Grandissimes conceived was the Negro question. It was on this question that Cable wished to throw some light by put­ ting it in its historical context; he wished to regard it “in the light of that past history — those beginnings — which had so differentiated the Louisiana civilization from the American scheme of public society”. And he meant to make T h e G ran ­ dissim es “as truly a political work as it has ever been cal- led”.24 It is obvious that he intended to show the bad effects of slavery as well on the individual as on the whole society. It seems also as if Cable regarded the Creoles as particularly unprogressive, although there is no evidence that he hated them, as some Creole spokesmen maintained. It is more prob­ able that in his reformatory zeal he wanted to teach them “some fundamental lessons of society and government”, as Boyesen put it. The innate differences in temperament and attitude towards life between the pleasure-loving, easy-going Latin Creoles and Cable, the Presbyterian Anglo-Saxon, must

!1 . . J J y P olitics”. 182

not be overlooked in tnis connection, un tfte wnoie, nowever, it seems as if the Latin peculiarities of the Creoles struck Cable as amusing and appealed to his artistic sense. He cer­ tainly did not wish to do away with the cblourful traits in Creole life. But he objected to Creole unprogressiveness and Creole pride, in ancestry particularly; and it was mainly towards them that he directed his thrusts. CONCLUSION

W ith Dr. Sevier, Cable had, by the age of forty, finished all the literary work on which his reputation as an author was primarily to rest. To the plane of excellence of the short stories of Old Creole Days, the novelette Madame Delphine, and the two novels The Grandissimes a n d D r. S e v ie r h e never reached in his later fiction. In 1884 he removed from the South, thus abandoning what was undoubtedly his best source of inspiration, his native New Orleans. Soon he was engrossed by a violent campaign for the civil rights of Negroes, and he did not find much time for creative writing. The artist, it is usually said, was destroyed by the reformer. This may be true of John March, Southerner but it is hardly true of later novels such as The Cavalier, Bylow Hill, Kincaid’s B a tte ry , a n d Gideon’s Band. The fact is that in those books Cable consciously refrained from being a reformer, the reason being either a desire not to antagonize the South in the way he had done in the 1880’s or in a complete revision of his attitude towards literature. Such a revision is, in fact, in evidence in his articles and letters. W hile at the time he wrote his early masterpieces he held the view that literature should present and defend truth, assert rights, and rectify thoughts, morals, manners, and society, “even though it shake the established order of things like an earthquake”,^ he came to believe, in the 1890’s, that the main purpose of fiction was to entertain.2 In this changed attitude of his lies, no doubt, ------1------i ' “The Due Restraints and Liberties of Literature”, an address de­ livered by Cable at the Commencement Exercises of the Academical Department of the University of Louisiana, on June 15, 1883. (Printed as a pamphlet, New Orleans, 1883.) ‘ See for instance a letter from Cable to W. Barbe, dated April 7, 1900. Bikle, op. cit., 247—249. 1 3 184 part of the explanation of his deterioration as a novelist; being no longer fired "with a reformatory zeal, he was unable to create really moving literature.^ Yet Cable’s life and work after his removal to the North are far from being devoid of interest or significance. Some of his books produced during that time, though not so good as O ld Creole Days or The Grandissimes, are well worth reading, e.g. Bonaventiire, Strong Hearts, The Cavalier, a n d L o v e rs of Louisiana-, his reading tours all over the United Stales and in Canada contributed to awakening interest in literature; his work for a reform of prisons and for the civil rights of Negroes should not be underestimated, nor should his educational work at Northampton, the Home-Culture Clubs and the People’s Institute. All of this will be treated, it is hoped, in a forth­ coming volume. ’ See Arlin Turner, -‘George W. Cable, Novelist and Reformer”, South Atlantic Quarterly, XLVIII, No. 4, October, 1949. BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. WORKS BY CABLE

A. BOOKS Old Creole Days, New York, 1879 (1899).‘ The Grandissimes, New York, 1880 (1899) Madame Delphine, New York, 1881. (Included in later editions of Old Creole Days.) History and Present Condition of New Orleans, Washington, 1881, (In cooperation with Geo. W. Waring.) The Creoles of Louisiana, New York, 1884. Dr. Sevier, Boston, 1884 (New York, 1899).* The Silent South, New York, 1885. Bonaventure, New York, 1888. Strange True Stories of Louisiana, New York, 1889. The Negro Question, New York, 1890. The Busy Man’s Bible, Meadville, Pa., 1891. John March, Southerner, New York, 1894. Strong Hearts, New York, 1899. The Cavalier, New York, 1901. By low Hill, New York, 1902. Kincaid’s Battery, New York, 1908. Posson Jone’ and Pere Raphael, New York, 1909. Gideon’s Band, New York, 1914. The Amateur Garden, New York, 1914. The Flower of the Chapdelaines, New York, 1918. Lovers of Louisiana, New York, 1918.

B. ARTICLES, SEPARATELY PRINTED STORIES, PAMPHLETS, AND MINOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS AND MAGAZINES- “’Sieur George”, Scribner’s Monthly, October, 1873. “Belles Demoiselles Plantation”, Scribner’s Monthly, April, 1874. ‘ The year within brackets is the year of printing of the edition referred to in the present work. ’ A number of short contribulions lo magazines and newspapers are not included in the list. 186

“Tite Poulette”, Scribner’s M onthly, October, 1874. “Jean-ah Poquelin”, Scribner’s Monthly, May, 1875. “Madame Delicieiise”, Scribner’s Monthly, August, 1875. “Caf6 des Exiles”, Scribner’s Monthly, March, 1876. “Posson Jone’”, Appleton’^ Journal, April 1, 1876. The Grandissimes, Scribner’s Monthly, November, 1879—October, 1880. , Madame Delphine, Scribner’s Monthly, May, June, July, 1881. “Who Are the Creoles?”, Century, January, 1883. “Creoles in the American Revolution”, Century, February, 1883. “The End of Foreign Dominion in Louisiana”, Century, March, 1883. “Plotters and Pirates of Louisiana”, Century, April, 1883. “The Great South Gate”, Century, June, 1883. “The Due Restraints and Liberties of Literature”, an address deli­ vered on June 15, 1883, at the Commencement Exercises of the Academical Department of the University of Louisiana, printed as a pamplet. New Orleans, 1883. “Flood and Plague in New Orleans”, Century, July, 1883. A letter to the ed. of the Critic under the heading “My Acquaintance with Cable”, Critic, August 25, 1883. Dr. Sevier, Century, November 1883—October, 1884. “The Convict Lease System in the Southern States”, Century, February, 1884. “We of the South”, Century, November, 1884. “The Freedman’s Case in Equity”, Century, January, 1885. “Margaret”, Christian Union, January 1, 1885. “New Orleans Before the Capture”, Century, April, 1885. “Negro English in Literature”, Critic, April 18, 1885. “Professional Christianity”, Advance (Chicago), July 30, 1885. ' “A National Debt”, Independent, August 29, 1885. “The Silent South”, Century, September, 1^85. “Creole Slave Dances: The Dance in Place Congo”, Century, February, 1886. “International Copyright” (with others). Century, February, 1886. “Creole Slave Songs”, Century, April, 1886. “The True South vs. the Silent South”, Century, May, 1886. “Is It Sectional or National?”, Century, October, 1886. “Carancro”, Century, January, February, 1^87. “Grande Pointe”, Century, March, 1887. “Au Large”, Century, November, 1887—March, 1888. “The Busy Man’s Bible”, Sunday School Times, December 10, 1887. “A Layman’s Hints” , Sunday School Times, December 17, 1887— December 29, 1888. “The Negro Problem in the United States”, Contemporary Review (London), March, 1888. 187

“The Negro Question”, New York Tribune & Inter-Ocean (Chicago), March 4, 1888. “On the Writing of Novels” (with others). Critic, March 24, 1888. “What Shall the Negro Do?”, Forum, August, 1888. “Home-Culture Clubs”, Century, August, 1888. Strange True Stories of Louisiana, Century, November, 1888—October, 1889. “A Simpler Southern Question”, Forum, December, 1888. “What Makes the Color Line?”, American (Chicago), June 13, 1889. “A Word About Dr. Holland”, Christian Union, July 25, 1889. “Strange True Stories of Louisiana” (open letter to the Century), Century, September, 1889. “Congregational Unity in Georgia”, Congregationalist, September 26, 1889. “New Orleans”, Encyclopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, 1889. “Equal Rights in the South”, New York Tribune, February 23, 1890. “Pure Government: Free Government”, American, March 1, 1890. “The White League of New Orleans”, Century, April, 1890. “Solutions for Southern Problems”, Our Day, April, 1890. “A Southern Instance”, New York Tribune, April 2, 1890. “How to Study the Bible”, Sunday School Times, November 15, 1890. “The South as a Mission Field”, American Missionary, January, 1891. “How to Teach the Bible”, Ladies’ Home Journal, February, March, April, 1891. “Does the Negro Pay for His Education?”, Forum, July, 1892. “Education for the Common People in the South”, Cosmopolitan Magazine, November, 1892. “A West Indian Slave Insurrection”, Scribner’s Magazine, December, 1892. “The Taxidermist”, Scribner’s Magazine, May, 1893. “New Orleans”, St. Nicholas, November, December, 1893. “The Gentler Side of Two Great Southerners”, Century, December, 1893. John March, Southerner, Scribner’s Magazine, January—December, 1894. “After-Thoughts of a Story-Teller”, North American Review, January, 1894. “Speculations of a Story-Teller”, Atlantic Monthly, July, 1896. “Gregory’s Island”, Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1896. “Extracts from a Story-Teller’s Dictionary”, Chap-Book, September 15, 1896. “The Brown Ghost”, Sym posium , October, 1896. “ T q See Our Life as Romance Sees It”, Sym posium , November, 1896. “A Visit From Barrie”, Sym posium , December, 1896. “The Portrait of a Life”, Book-Buyer, February, 1897. “A Curious Misdemeanor In Letters”. Book-Buyer, March, 1897. 1 3 ★ 188

“Books of the Holiday Season”, Book-Buyer, December, 1897. “Art and Morals in Books”, Independent, December 16, 1897. “The Entomologist”, Scribner’s Magazine, January, February, March, 1899. “Children of Jesus: A Christmas Carol”, Ladies’ Home Journal, December, 1899. “Pfere Raphael” , Century, August, 1901. “The Clock in the Sky”, Scribner’s Magazine, September, 1901. “Some of My Pets” , Youth’s Companion, September 5, 1901. “The Angel of the Lord”, included in A House Party, a collection of anonymous stories. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston, 1901. On William Dean Howells, a letter dated July, 1899, published in J. B. Pond, Eccentricities of Genius (pp. 337—339), London, 1901. Bylaw Hill, Atlantic Monthly, March, April, May, 1902. “Neighborly Gardens”, Good Housekeeping, April, 1904. “The American Garden”, Scribner’s Magazine, May, 1904. A speech made at a dinner given on December 5, 1905, in celebration of Mark Twain’s 70th birthday, Mark Twain’s 70th Birthday, H arper & Brothers, New York & London, n.d. “Where to Plant What”, Century, May, 1906. “The Home-Culture Clubs”, World’s Work, October, 1906. “New Orleans Revisited”, Book-News Monthly, April, 1909. “Thomas Nelson Page: A Study in Reminiscence and Appreciation”, Book-News Monthly, November, 1909. “Midwinter Gardens of New Orleans”, Scribner^s Magazine, January, 1910. “The Cottage Gardens of Northampton”, Youth’s Companion, April 13, 1911. “William Cullen Bryant”, Encyclopcedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911. “My Philosophy” , Good Housekeeping, June,* 1915. “Malvina” (Song and melody). Liber Scriptorum, published by the Authors’ Club, New York, 1921.

II. OTHER MATERIAL QUOTED OR CONSULTED

A. MANUSCRIPTS The very extensive George Washington Cable Collection in the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library of Tulane University, New Orleans, includes large numbers of letters to Cable, copies and originals of letters from Cable, manuscripts of published and unpublished works, clippings, notebooks and a diary, and other material. Unless other­ wise noted, citations of letters and manuscripts in the present work 189 refer lo this collection. The family letters and manuscripts to be found in the library of Yale University, New Haven, have also been consulted. B. BOOKS AND DISSERTATIONS

Ahnebrink, Lars, The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction, Uppsala, 1950. Arnaud, Henri A., L’element fran^ais dans I’aeuvre de George Washington Cable, unpublished Master’s Thesis, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1936. Arthur, Stanley, Old Families of Louisiana, New Orleans, 1931. Asbury, H erbert, The French Quarter, New York, 1938. Ashe, Thomas, Travels in America, London, 1808. Baker, Marion (ed.). Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans, New York, 1885. Baskerville, W illiam M., Southern Writers, Nashville, 1902. B asso, E. S. (ed.). The World from Jackson Square, New York, 1948. B ik le , Lucy L. C a b le , George W. Cable, His Life and Letters, New York & London, 1928. Bisland, Elizabeth, Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Boston & New York, 1906. Blankenship, R., American Literature as an Expression of the Natio­ nal Mind, London, 1931. Boas, George (ed.). Romanticism in America, Baltimore, 1940. Bolton, Sarah, Famous American Authors, New York, 1887. Brooks, Van Wvck, The Flowering of New England, New York, 1936, ------■ The World of Washington Irving, New York, 1944. ------■ The Times of Melville and Whitman,, New York, 1947. Cambridge History of American Literature, Cambridge, 1933 ff. Clemens, Samuel L., Life on the Mississippi, New York, 1883. CuRTi, M erle, The Growth of American Thought, N ew York & Lon­ don, 1943. Dennis, Mary Cable, The Tail of the Comet, New York, 1937. Downey, Thomas H., George W. Cable, unpublished Master’s Thesis, Louis,iana State University, Baton Rouge, 1930. Ellsw orth, Wili.iam W., A Golden Age of Authors, Boston & New York, 1919. Fortier,- Alcee, A Few Words about the Creoles of Louisiana, Baton ■ Rouge, 1892. Garland, Hamlin, Roadside Meetings, New York, 1930. Gayarre, Charles, The History of Louisiana, New York, 1867. ------The Creoles of History and the Creoles of Romance, n.d. G ild e r , J. L. & J. B. (eds.), Authors At Home, New York, 1905. Gilder, Rosamund, Letters of Richard Watson Gilder, Boston & New York, 1916. 190

Harkins, E. F., Little Pilgrimages Among the Men Who Have Written Famous Books, Boston, 1901. Harris, Julia C., The Life and Letters of Joel Chandler Harris, Boston & New York, 1918. Hearn, Lafcadio, An American Miscellany, II, New York, 1924. Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans, see Baker, Marion Holliday, Carl, A History of Southern Literature, New York, 1906 Howells, Mildred (ed.). Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, New York, 1928. Howells, W illiam Dean, Heroines of Fiction, II, New York & Lon­ don, 1901. ------My Mark Twain, New York & London, 1910. Jon es, H. M u m fo rd , America and French Culture, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1927. Juhan, Norma D., A Critical Study of George Washington Cable’s Fiction, unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, 1940. Junius, E. (pseud.). Critical Dialogue between Aboo and Caboo, Mingo City (pseud.), 1880. King, Grace, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters, N e w Y ork , 1932. K n ig h t, G. C., James Lane Allen, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1935. Liljegren, s. B., The Revolt against Romanticism in American Literature as Evidenced in the Works of S. L. Clemens, Upp­ sala, 1945. Lundblad, Jane, Nathaniel Hawthorne and European Literary Tra­ dition, Uppsala, 1947. Macy, John (ed.), American Writers On American Literature, N ew York, 1931. ------The Spirit of American Literature, New York, 1913. M a r k T w a in see Cl e m e n s . Mark Twain’s 70th Birthday, H arper’s & Brothers, New York & Lon­ don, n.d. McWilliams, Vera, Lafcadio Hearn, Houghton Mifflin Co., Bos- - ton, 1946. Mims, E., Sidney Lanier, Boston & New York, 1905. New Orleans City Guide^ (written and compiled by the Federal Wri­ ters’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the City of New Orleans), Boston, 1938. New Orleans directories for 1842, 1843, 1846, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, and 1854. Olmsted, F. L., Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, N ew Y ork , 1859. Paine, A lbert B., Mark Twain, New York, 1912. ------Mark Twain’s Letters, New York, 1917. 191

P a r k s , E. W., Charles Egbert Craddock, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941. Farrington, Vernon L., Main Currents in American Thought, New York, 1930. Pattee, Fred L., A History of American Literature Since 1870, N ew York & London, 1915. ------The Development of the American Short Story, New York, 1923. Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Boston, 1929. P o n d , J. B., Eccentricities of Genius, London, 1901. Quinn, Arthur H., American Fiction, New York & London, 1936. Rightor, Henry (ed.). Standard History of New Orleans, Chicago, 1900. Roland, Dunbar (ed.), Official Letter Books of W . C C. Claiborne, Jackson, Miss., 1917. Saxon, L\le, Father Mississippi, New York, 1927. Spiller, Robert E. (et. al.), Literary History of the United States, N ew York, 1948. Tinker, Edward L., Lafcadio Hearn’s American Days, New York, 1924. T ooker, L. F., The Jogs and Tribulations of an Editor, New York & London, 1923. Toulmin, Henry A., Social Historians, Boston, 1911. Van Doren, Carl, The American Novel, N e w Y o rk , 1945. Vedder, Henry C., American Writers of To-Day, N e w York, B oston & Chicago, 1895. W yeth, John A., Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, N e w Y o rk & Lon d on , 1899. C. ARTICLES

A d a m o li, G., “New Orleans in 1867”, Louisiana Historical Quarterly, VI, July, 1923. A ld e r m a n , E. A., “Education in the South”, Outlook, LXVIII, 775 — 780, August 3, 1901. Aldrich, Charles, “Louisiana’s Veteran Author”, Critic, XIII, 29 —30, January 18, 1890. Anonymous, “How Mr. Cable Came To Write”, Critic, VII, 130— 131, March 12, 1887. ------“Mr. Cable and the Creoles”, Critic, IV, 298, June 21, 1884. ------“My Acquaintance with Cable”, Critic, III, 316— 317, July 28, 1883. ------“The Works of George W. Cable”, Critic, XX, 354—355, Decem­ ber 2, 1893. B a r r ie , J. M., “A Note on Mr. Cable’s ‘The Grandissimes’ ”, Book­ man, VII, 401—403, July, 1898. Bloom, M argaret, “George W. Cable”, Bookman, LXXIII, June, 1931. 192

Bowen, Edwin W., “George Washington Cable: An Appreciation”, South Atlantic Quarterly, XVIII, 145— 155, April, 1919. Brewster, Mar\, “George W. Cable”, Congregationalist, December 10, 1925. Clay, Charles M., “George W . Cable” , Critic, October 8, C ocks, R. S., “The Fiction of Grace King”, Louisiana Historical Quarterly, VI, 358, July, 1923. C o le m a n , C. W., “Recent Movement in Southern Literature”, Har­ per’s Weekly, LXXIV, 837—855, May, 1887. Dart, Henry P., “George W . Cable” , Louisiana Historical Quarterly, VIII, 647—656, October, 1925. D e la v ig n e , J. C., “Critique du dernier ouvrage de M. George W . Cable ‘Who are the Creoles?’ ”, Comptes-rendus de I’Athenee Louisianais, March, 1883. E id so n , J. O lin , “ G. W . Cable’s Philosophy of Progress”, Southwest Review, XXI, 211— 216, January, 1936. EkstrOm, K jell, “Cable’s Grandissimes and the Creoles”, Studia Neophilologica, XXI, Nos. 2—3, 1949. ------“The Cable-Howells Correspondence”, Studia Neophilologica, XXII, No. 1, 1950. G ilm o r e , H. W., “The Old New Orleans and the New”, American Sociological Review, IX, 385—394, August, 1944. Guyol, Louise H., “A Southern Writer in Her New Orleans Home”, Louisiana Historical Quarterly, VI, 364—374, July, 1923. Hale, Edward, “Mr. Cable and the Creoles”, Critic, VII, 121— 122. H a r w o o d , W. S., “New Orleans in Fiction ’, Critic, XLVII, 426— 435, November, 1905. Hearn, Lafcadio, “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances”, Century, November, 1883. H olland, Josiah, “Southern Literature”, Scribner’s M onthly, XXII, 785— 786, September, 1881. Jam es, W. P., “On the Theory and Practise of Local Color”, Living Age, June 12, 1897. Johnson, Robert Underwood, “Commemorative Tributes to Cable, Sargent, Pennell”, American Academy of Arts and Letters Publications, No. 57, New York, 1927. M o o r h e a d , F., “Why I Like George W. Cable”, Illustrated American, XV, 461—462, April 21, 1894. Murkay, M. R., “The 1870’s in American Literature”, American Speech, I, 323—328, March, 1926. Oechsner, Kinne Cable, “The Life of George W. Cable”, Times- Picayune (New Orleans), March 29, April, 5, 12, 19, 26, 1925. P e y t a v in , j. L., “Refutation des erreurs de M. Geo. W. Cable au sujet des Creoles”, Comptes-rendus de I’Athenee Louisianais, July, 1888. 193

R o s e b o r o , Viola, “George W. Cable, the Man and the Novelist”, Book-News Monthly, XXVII, 566— 568, April, 1909. Skilton, Charles, “The Young Author and the Old Author”, Book- Buyer, XVIII, 26— 29, February, 1899. Stuart, Ruth McEnery, “American Backgrounds for Fiction”, Book­ man, XXXIX, 620—630, August, 1914. Tinker, Edward L., “Cable and the Creoles”, American Literature, V, 313—326, January, 1934. Turner, Ahlin, “George Washington Cable’s Literary Apprentice­ ship”, Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXIV, No. 1, January, 1941. ------“Whittier Calls on George W. Cable”, New England Quarterly, XXII, No. 1, March, 1949. ------“George W. Cable, Novelist and Reformer”, South Atlantic Quarterly, XLVIII, No 4, October, 1949. Waring, George, “George W. Cable” , Century, XXIII, 602—605, February, 1882. W ethebill, “George W . Cable” , Critic, October 9, 1886. W ykoff, George S., “The Cable Family in Indiana”, American Literature, I, 183— 195, May, 1929.

13 INDEX^

A beille (New O rleans), 164, 174 Burns, Robert, 7 About. E. F. V., 91—3, 96— 7 Burroughs, John, 81 Adams, WSrt, 28 Burt, Mary E., lOOn Aldrich, Prof., 179 Butler, Benjamin, 22, 24q Andersen, H. C., 95, 97 Byron, Lord, 33, 42, 93, 97 Appleton & to ., 46 Appleton’s Journal, 49n, 51, 53, 59 Cable, Antoinette, see Cox Appleton, Thomas, 73 Cable, George W., “After-thoughts A rnaud, H enri A., 91— 2, 93q, 97, a t a Story-teller”, 63q, 104q, 104q—5q 108q; “Bibi”, 50—2, 75; Bona- Ashe, Thom as, 166 venture, 83, 184; Bglow Hill, Atlantic Monthly, 2, 51, 75, 78, 159q 183; The Cavalier, 33q, 38n, 42, ''93nq, 183—4; Creoles of Loui­ Bacon, F„ 42, 93, 97 siana, 85—6, 105, l l l q , 143q Baker, Marion, 49n, 70q, 85n, 159, —51q, 152; “Drop Shot”, 39, 160nq, 168, 171, 178q 42, 43q, 44, 47q—8q, 113—4; B ancroft, G., 37 Dr. Sevier, 70, 79, 87—90, 105 B arrie, J. M., 158q, 170q — 10. 141q—2q. 159—61. 183; B attin, G., 173q “The Due Restraints and Li­ Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar- berties of Literature”, 183q; Eisenach, 85 “Freedman’s Case in Equity”, Bikl6, Lucy Cable, 7q, 12, 17, 55n, 71; Gideon’s Band, 183; The 58nq, 73n, lOOn Grandissimes, 50, 54— 5, 56q B illings, Josh, 43, 44n, 93, 97 — 7q, 60— 1, 69, 76. 79, 92, 94, Black Code, 101—2 97, 100—5. 108. 122q--l0q, 148. Black, W illiam C., 41, 65, 82, 100 154— 8, 160, 162, 166—9, 171, Boardman (Bordman, Boreman), 173—4, 177, 180—1, 183— 4; Amos, 4—5; Benjamin; Daniel; History and Present Condition Deborah; Hannah; Mary; Re­ of New Orleans, 83— 6, 93n; becca; Samuel; Sylvia; Thad- John March, 183; K incaid’s deus; Zadia, 4 B attery, 183; Lovers of Loui­ Borgstede, J. R., 6 siana, 184; Madame Delphine, Boyesen, Hjalmar H., 46nq, 55q— 64, 76, 104—5. 140q— Iq. 154. 6q, 57, 58q, 95— 7, 102, 154, 157. 183; "My P olitics”. I6q— 155q, 180q—Iq 7q. 21q, 24. 28q. 31q. 33q—5q. Brewster, Mary Cable, 94q 37q, 40q, 41. 47q—8q, 54, 55q, B rickell, W arren, 38n, 105, 107—8 56, 65n, 82q—3q, 85, 86q, 99, B rittin , A. B., 18q lOlq—2q, 105q, 107n, 143q, B runs, J. Dickson, 63 181q; “New Orleans Before the Bnel, C., 86 C apture”, 21q— 4q; Old Creole Bulwer-Lytton, 8 Days, 48—54. 58—9, 63—4, 69, Burlingame, E. L., 78 79, 83. 92, 94, 97. 105, 114— 22.

' A q is put after the number of the pages where quotations from the writer, manuscript, book, magazine, or newspaper occur. 195

153— t, 156, 158, 160, 174, 177, Critical Dialogue betiveen Aboo and 179—81, 183—4; “Belles De­ Caboo, A, 162q—3q, 164 moiselles Plantation”, 52, 115q —6q, 153— 4. 178; “Caf& des Dart, H. P., IB lnq Exilds”; 54, 121q—2q; “Jean-ah Davidson, J . O., 69— 70 Poquelin”, 53, 99, 117q—8q; D audet, A., 91, 93n, 94, 97 “Madame D^licieuse”, 53—4, De Bow's Review, 85 118, 119q—21q, 154; “Posson de Lac, Perrin, 85 - Jone' ”, 48, 53, 55n, 59, 99, 104, Dickens, Charles, 33, 42, 91—2, 94 jll7q, 154; “’Sieur George”, 2, —5, 97 50—2, il4 q —5q, 153; “’Tite D im itry, A lexander, 100 Poulette ’, 48, 52—3, 99, 116q Drake, A. W., 73n, 75 —7q; “Some of My Pets”, 18q; D runo, A. G., 170— 1 ' Strong Hearts, 184; “A Word Dum ont, 85 About. Dr. H olland”, 49q, 95 Cable, George \V. Sr., 3—8, 11—2, Edwards, Harry S., 2 13q—6q, 17, 19—20, 66 Eggleston, G. C., 2 Cable, Jam es B., 11, 26— 7, 33 Eliot, George, 94, 97 Cable, Kinne, see Oechsner Ellsworth, W. W., 94,-95q Cable, Louise, see Chard Emerson, R. W., 44, 93, 97 Cable, Louise Stewart, 39, 65, 72n, Everm an, W. A., 32q, 35q 74, 76— 7, 78n, 80n, 81n, 83n Cable, Lucy, see Bikle Farny, Henry, 70 Cable, Mary (n^e Stott), 3—4 F arragut, D. G., 22 Cable, Mary Louise, 4n, 11, 20, 34q, Fields, Annie, 161q 89 F laubert, G., 154 Cable, Rebecca, 3—9, 12— 4, 15q— Foote, Mary H., 75—6, 82, 85, 108n, — 7q, 19, 24—5, 27, 29, 31—3, 109, 157q 35— 7, 38n, 47—8, 66, 72, 75n, F orrest, N athan B., 28 ' 108 F ortier, Alcfie, 169, 179—80 ■ Cable, Sebastian, 3 : Calhoun, J. C., 2 Calvert, George, Goethe: His Life Gaskell, E.' C., 94, 97 and W orks, 41 Gayarr^, Charles, 48n, 77n, lllq — Canonge, P., 164 2q, 164, 165q—8q, 169, 176q, Century Magazine, 49, 69, 86, 89, 94 177; History of Louisiana, 47, Champney, J. W., 49; 66q 85, 164, 165q Chard, Louise Cable, 67n Gazette (B altim ore), 155 Charlevoix, 85 Gilder, Jeanette; Joseph, 66n, 80 Christian Intelligencer, 154q Gilder, Richard W., 49, 51q, 52, 53q Civil W ar, 1, 21—9, 49 —5q, 58q, 60q—Iq, |66, 73—5, Clay, C harles M., 25, 103q 80—1, 85n, 86, 88q—9q, 96q, Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain), 107^, 164nq 43, 66, 77—9, 93, 97, 157; L ifeGilman, Daniel C., 81 on the Mississippi, 79q, 157 Girling, K„ 179q Clements, G. H., 158nq, 171, 175q G rant, U. S., 22 —8q G ravier, Doctor, 99 Coleman, Bettie, 30nq, 31 G uthrie, J. B., 171q Coleridge, S. T., 33, 93n Courier (Boston), 153q Harper’s Weekly, 69— 70 Courier-Journal (Louisville), 41n H arris, Joel C handler, 2, 66, 79 C ovington,'J. A., 25n H arte, Bret, 43, 93, 96— 7 Cox, A ntoinette Cable, 3n, 6, 7q, H aughery, M argaret, 107 lln H aw thorne, N., 42, 93, 97 Craddock, C. E., 2, 160 Hay, John, 75, 156 Crescent (New O rleans), 173 Hearn, Lafcadio, 67, 68q—70q, Critic, 80, 95q, 103q, 105, 106q, 159q, 99, 105, 156, 160q— Iq 178 H ester, H enry G., 38 196

Historical Sketch Book and Guide Oechsner, Kinne Cable, 7q,- 8, 13, to New Orleans, 178q 18q, 92n H olland, J. G„ 49—50, 55, 57, 62, 73. Osgood, Jam es R., 78, 79rt 74q, 156q Osgood & Co., James R., 46, 47n, 87 Howells, W. D., 75— 76, 78q, 82, 156q— 7q Page, Thomas Nelson, 2 Hugo, V., 91—3, 97 ; Les Miserables, Palladium (Lawrenceburg, India­ 33, 93n; Notre-Dame de Paris, n a ), 5 93 Parker, Harrison, 38 Hume, David, 17 Pascoe, W. H., 25n Pattee, F. L„ 49, 91q, 92, 96, 99 Irving, W ashington, 91—3, 95, 97 Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, 86 Item (New Orleans), 69, 156 Pennell, Joseph, 86q—7q, 164, 170q Peytavin, J. L., 169— 70 Phelps, Roswell, 79n Jefferson, Joseph, 75, 80 Picard, N., 94q Jew ett, S. O., 161 Picayune (New Orleans), 39, 40— Johnson, R. U., 51q, 52n, 53n, 60q 1, 45— 47q—8q, 49n, 54, 55n, —2q, 64q, 80, 82nq, 86, 88, 96, 85, 108, 113, 154q, 160q, 174, 97q 177q Johnston, Richard M., 2, 67 Pinkney, E. C., 63 Journal (Boston), 155q—6q Poe, E. A., 33, 42, 91—3, 95, 97 Pope, Alexander, 7, 33, 93n Kabell, Jacob, 3 Kellogg, C lara L., 80 Redwood, Allen, 180q Kennedy, W. S., 108q, 174q Richardson, Anna, 179q—80q King, Edward, 49, 50q—3q, 57, 66, Rouquette, A. E., 162 91—2, 101 King, Grace, 171 Saint-Gaudens, 75 Kowaledski, Prof., 92n, 96q, 103, Saturday Review, 154q, 159q—60q 164q Sawyer, John T., 37n Krehbiel, H. E., 68— 71 Schabo, Adolphe, 105 ^ Scott, W alter, 17, 42, 93, 97 Lamb, Charles, 91 Scribner, Arm strong & Co., 46— 7, L anier, Sidney, 157q, 180 54—5, 58— 9 L athrop, G. P., o lq Scribner, Charles, 58— 9, 64q, 73, 75 Laveau, Marie, 104n Scribner’s Monthly, 2, 49—55, 60, 63 Lear, Edward, 94, 97 —4, 73, 85—6, 91, 95, 153— 4, Literary World, 108q, 174q 155q—6q Livingstone, Edward, 67 Scribner’s Sons, Charles, 49, 59n, Local colourists, 1—2 63n, 64n, 69 Longfellow, H. W., 42, 93, 97 Sebastian, G. S., 26 Sentinel (M ilwaukee), 105 M acaulay, T. B., 33, 93n Shakespeare, W., 33, 42, 80, 93, 97 Macdonald, George, 42, 95, 97 Simms (Sim s), W. G., 63, 77. 168 Malory, Thomas, 44, 93—4, 97 Smith, Roswell, 49, 64q, 75, 82q, Marbois, 85 164n Mark Twain, see Clemens Smith, William J., 37n, 38nq M artineau, H arriet, 85 Soniat, Elv^, 175q Maupassant, Guy de, 91—2 Stedm an, E. C., Iq, 75 M eredith, G., 158 Stockton, F. R., 73 Merimee, P., 91—4, 97 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 78; Uncle M ilton, John, 42, 44, 93, 97 Tom’s Cabin, 16— 7, 42, 97n Mims, E., 2q Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 2 Modjeska, Madame, 80 Sun (B altim ore), 159 M unro, Neil, 158 Sw inburne, A. C., 93, 97

N ation, 153q, 155q Taine, H., 44, 93, 97 Noble, Ezekiel; Sylvia, 4 Tennyson, A., 38n, 42, 44, 93, 97 197

Thackeray, W. M., 91—2, 94—5, 97, Van Doren, Carl, 91—2 155 Thompson, G. M., 179q Walker, William, 38n Tinker, Edward L., 41q—2q, 170 W arilig, G. E., 83—5 Tim es (New York), 154—5 W arner, Charles D., 66, 76q—7q, Times-Democrat (New O rleans), 71, 78. 158 80n, 109n, 160q, 174q—5q W hitm an, W „ 93, 97 Times-Picayune (New Orleans), Whitteman, Henry, 173 see Picayune W hittier, J. G., 93, 97, 158q Tim rod, H., 63 W ilde, Oscar, 66, 158 Tribune (New York), 159 Wykoff, George, S., 13 Tourgu^neff, I. S., 94, 96—7 Turner, Arlin, 42—3, 44n, 113, 114q Young, Charles W., 177q