Title: The Mentor, Vol. 1, No. 25, American Novelists
Author: Mabie, Hamilton Wright
Language: English
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                            THE MENTOR

              “A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

              Vol. 1                          No. 25



AMERICAN NOVELISTS

    HENRY JAMES
    WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
    THOMAS NELSON PAGE
    JAMES LANE ALLEN
    WINSTON CHURCHILL
    OWEN WISTER

[Illustration]

_By HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE_


This group of distinguished novelists may be divided into four
smaller groups, not only in time, but in selection and treatment of
subjects. Mr. James and Mr. Howells are now the senior members of
the literary fraternity in this country, and have not only American
but European reputations. Only three novelists before them attained
this distinction. The earliest of these, Cooper, is still read in
many parts of the world, and in little German villages boys call
themselves “Cooper Indians,” and play at oldtime savage warfare.
The author of the “Leatherstocking Tales” wrote the first original
American novel, and Hawthorne wrote the first American romance. The
first described the manners and customs of a people whom he knew
at first hand, but whom Europe knew only by hearsay; the second
analyzed the motives and described the workings of the Puritan
spirit, and showed how the consciousness of sin worked itself out
in the Puritan character. The theme was new, and the manner of
treating it was both effective and beautiful--and Hawthorne remains
the most artistic writer this country has produced.

[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE]

The next novelist to whom Europe paid attention was Mrs. Stowe.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was like a great torch held up over a fiercely
disputed field; it showed men and women living under all conditions
of slavery, paternal and humane on one hand, and commercial and
cruel on the other. It made a drama of a political issue, and was
read with bated breath by a million people. It interested Europe
because it was a powerful story dealing with a situation that had
attracted the attention of the whole Western world; it was at once
translated into several languages, and could be found from London
to Constantinople.

[Illustration: HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. HARTFORD, CONN.]


HENRY JAMES

When Mr. James began writing a generation ago there had been no
American fiction of a high order for twenty years or more, and
the country had grown rapidly in experience and knowledge. Mr.
James showed this more cosmopolitan attitude toward the world,
and his style had a quality which was new in our fiction. It was
clear in those days; it had great flexibility and capacity for
conveying fine distinctions and delicate shadings of thought; it
had a tone of maturity which was lacking in the earlier writers,
and it was the medium of expression of a thoroughly trained man
to whom writing was a fine art. The early short stories, of
which “The Passionate Pilgrim” may serve as an example, arrested
attention by reason of their insight into character and their fine
workmanship. There was an air of romance about them; but it was the
romance of human temperament, not of incident. The early novels
were not popular in the sense of running into large editions; but
“The American” found many readers who were quick to appreciate
its penetrating and searching analysis of character, its sharp
contrasts of American and European traits, and the refinement of a
style which is both rich and restrained.

[Illustration: W. D. HOWELLS’ SUMMER HOME AT KITTERY, MAINE; ALSO
INTERIOR OF LIBRARY]

[Illustration]

All novelists reveal character; but those in whom the dramatic
instinct is strong show it chiefly in action. Mr. James brings out
character largely by means of analysis and description, and for
this reason he is often classed among the psychological novelists.
In his later years the habit of analysis grew on him to such
an extent that the movement of his stories was impeded and his
style became complex and at times obscure. In a time when social
relations between America and Europe were becoming more intimate,
Mr. James found a rare opportunity of studying American character
against a European background, and in the whole range of fiction
there have been few writers of more acute penetration, of greater
delicacy of stroke and line in painting character, than he. He
was one of the small group of American authors to whom the word
“distinction” may be applied.


W. D. HOWELLS

Mr. James was a student of men and women in society, using that
word in its narrower sense; Mr. Howells, who is also a keen
observer, has dealt with less sophisticated men and women, and has
given us American types unmodified by other influences. A man of
deep sympathy with his fellows and sharing in his heart the sorrow
and pain of the common lot, a lover of Tolstoi and a professed
realist, with a strong leaning toward constructive socialism, Mr.
Howells has kept his fiction free from any kind of preaching. He
has understood his vocation as an artist, and has not made his
novels serve his social and political doctrines. Although a man of
strong convictions, he is a writer whose touch is notably light,
and whose humor is delightfully unforced and happy.

[Illustration: W. D. HOWELLS IN HIS LIBRARY]

Born in the Central West, Mr. Howells has kept its democracy of
spirit and reinforced it by familiarity with modern languages and
literature. In his lighter work he has made studies of the whims
and foibles of certain feminine types in this country, of such
fidelity that they have disturbed those who believe that Americans
should tell the truth about themselves only to themselves, and that
to take Europe into the national confidence is a kind of petty
treason. But if Mr. Howells has seemed sometimes to draw American
women with too light a hand, no one so well as he has conveyed a
sense of the purity of American women, and the wholesome tone
of American social life outside the very limited circle of what
is known as the “Fast Set,”--a group of men and women who are
representative not of a nation, but of the attitude toward life so
strikingly defined in “The House of Mirth.” In his graver mood Mr.
Howells has given us “The Rise of Silas Lapham,” one of the lasting
achievements of American fiction, and “A Hazard of New Fortunes,”
both original studies of American life during the age of great
fortune-making. The charm of Mr. Howells’ art and the refinement of
his humor have not given him the popularity of the more dramatic
novelists; but he has made a place of high importance for himself
in American literature, and in the hearts of a host of readers who
have discerned in him a singularly pure and lovable nature.


THOMAS NELSON PAGE

The aftermath of the war between the States was an idealization of
the old social order in the South. Mr. Page and Mr. Allen found
in the tradition and habit of the Old South elements of a romance
founded on reality. Society in the South before the war received
its tone from men and women bred in habits of deference and
courtesy, sensitive to any slight put upon honor, and prodigal of
hospitality. It had rested on an unstable basis; but it had those
delightful qualities which came with leisure, easy conditions, and
the absence of commercial spirit. This vanishing order found in Mr.
Page’s earliest stories a record true to life and yet enveloped
in the air of romance. “Marse Chan,” “Unc’ Edinburg,” and “Meh
Lady” gave the country a thrill of pleasure, so sure was their
appeal to sentiment, so refreshingly human and unforced, a rich
and picturesque life of its own, a fresh field for the romance of
spiritual adventure and social habit.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS NELSON PAGE

_Oakland Plantation, Hanover County, Virginia._]

In these moving tales, told with unobstrusive artistic skill, the
long-suspended literary tradition of Virginia received an impulse
which has since given the country a group of stories of original
quality.


JAMES LANE ALLEN

Never did pioneers carry into a new country a finer blending of
the daring which moves the frontier farther from the old centers,
and the chivalry of romance for women and idealization of emotion
and experience, than went into the fertile and beautiful Kentucky
country in the days which followed Boone’s adventurous career,
and produced the types of character which appear in James Lane
Allen’s “The Choir Invisible.” The Blue Grass country found in
him a lover who was also an artist, and the background of his
stories is sketched with exquisite skill. “The Kentucky Cardinal,”
“Aftermath,” and the stories in “Flute and Violin” have not been
surpassed in beauty of diction in our fiction. If one might venture
to predict long life for any contemporary writing, he would not
hesitate to put the short stories of these two Southern writers
among American classics.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF JAMES LANE ALLEN, NEAR LEXINGTON, KY.]

Mr. Page and Mr. Allen have written long stories as well; in
several instances dealing with contemporary life and manners. Mr.
Allen has kept in the field of character study with increasing
emphasis on the influence of environment. The title of one of his
later stories, “The Mettle of the Pasture,” suggests the relation
of the actors in the drama to the soil on which they live, while
the lifelike study of the horse-breeder in “The Doctor’s Christmas
Eve” is a portrait which could not have been drawn outside the
boundaries of Kentucky. Mr. Page in his later stories has dealt
with the spread of the commercial spirit, the conditions in which
women work, political corruption, and social changes.


WINSTON CHURCHILL

Mr. Wister and Mr. Churchill have one great interest in
common,--they are deeply concerned with American character and
experience. Mr. Churchill has dramatized our history in a series
of works, beginning with “Richard Carvel” of the Colonial period;
continued in “The Crossing,” of the period of the first great
westward emigration through the passes of the Alleghenies; in
“The Crisis,” a picture of struggles between the old North and the
old South, between 1861 and 1865, localized in St. Louis; and in
“Mr. Crewe’s Career,” a study of the “machine” in politics and the
beginnings of the struggle for popular government which has become
a national movement. Mr. Churchill draws with a free hand on a
large canvas, and his works have epic quality, emphasizing large
and significant movements and defining the place of individuals in
them, rather than presenting delicately sketched portraits of men
and women in the narrower range of personal experience.

[Illustration: HARLEKENDEN HOUSE, THE HOME OF WINSTON CHURCHILL IN
CORNISH, N.H.]

[Illustration: MUSIC ROOM IN HARLEKENDEN HOUSE]


OWEN WISTER

Mr. Wister has the gift of picturing real, vital characters, and
his stories are full of a brilliant and moving life. His people
are not only alive, but intensely and actively alive. A man bred
in the best social traditions, a graduate of the oldest American
university, Mr. Wister was fortunate enough to know the frontier at
the very moment when the forces of business and the second great
Western movement were about to destroy it. Most men who wrote about
the old frontier, either in fiction or in plays, were concerned
with its melodramatic aspects,--its guns, and shirts, sombreros,
and bucking broncos. Mr. Wister saw the character behind these
stage costumes; he recognized the fiber of the men,--their courage,
their spirit of comradeship, their rough but genuine humor, their
passion for wide horizons and the freedom of the life of the
plains. In “The Virginian,” and the short stories from the same
hand, our fiction has a series of studies of types of character now
almost extinct, and of a stage of life which has disappeared. When
“Lady Baltimore” appeared, Mr. Wister had passed from society in
an elemental stage to a Southern community which has preserved its
oldtime qualities of refinement of manner, dignity of habit, and
a hospitality which is the very flower of high breeding and ease
of condition. And Mr. Wister was as much at home in Charleston as
on the old frontier; a fact highly significant of the quality and
fiber of the man. Among American novelists he will hold a place of
his own by reason of the vitality and artistic skill of his work.

[Illustration: OWEN WISTER’S FAMILY PLACE, IN GERMANTOWN, PA.]

[Illustration: EDITH WHARTON]

Mrs. Wharton’s stories, even more than those of Mr. James, describe
a social life which has taken its tone largely from an older and
more conventional society, which has lost its moral simplicity in
the complexity of an age of highly organized luxury, and which
has taken on the easy ways of a social life that is entirely
comfortable in conscience so long as it feels itself secure in
matters of taste. In art Mrs. Wharton is an expert by intuition
and practice. The author of “The House of Mirth” is analytical,
and secures her most striking effects, not by boldly projecting
her characters on a large canvas, but by uncovering their most
elusive moods, their obscure motives, the conflict of temperament,
character, and social traditions.

Such a power of lighting up hidden processes of thought as Mrs.
Wharton possesses needs the reënforcement of an art which is
both vigorous and sensitive; and this art is always at Mrs.
Wharton’s command. She has both precision and delicacy. She can
draw a character in detachment with such vitality of insight and
of portraiture that it holds the attention without the aid of
accessories; or she can sketch a cross-section of society with
convincing energy of stroke. She is the recorder of a highly
sophisticated society, more or less relaxed in tone and corrupted
by luxury.

[Illustration: MARGARET DELAND’S HOME IN BOSTON]

Mrs. Deland’s method is broader and her emotions of wider interest.
She has painted one portrait which the whole country loves. Dr.
Lavender has taken his place in the small group of imaginary
Americans who are as real as historical Americans. He is a type
dear to Americans, because his nature is sweet without a touch of
weakness, his vision clear without hardness, his moral perception
relentlessly keen but never divorced from pity and sympathy, and
his humor fresh and abounding. And Mrs. Deland has also the gift
of construction, and has written two or three novels which must be
counted among our best fiction.

[Illustration: MARGARET DELAND WRITING IN HER LIBRARY.

HER DOG “ROUGH” SITS BY]

No list of contemporary American writers of fiction would be
complete without the names of F. Hopkinson Smith, John Fox, Jr.,
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and Miss Mary Johnston. Mr. Smith has gained
skill as a writer steadily as he has gained skill as a painter; and
in the small group of stories which bear his name two or three are
likely to be read for a long time to come. “The Fortunes of Oliver
Horn” shows Mr. Smith’s art at his best, for it is art of the
heart as well as of the brain and hand. His romance has permanent
elements of human nature; idealism, loyalty, and love are the soul
of it.

Mr. Fox, who also finds his characters largely in the South, has
drawn the picture of the primitive mountain types in the Kentucky
hills with the charm which comes from great simplicity and from an
intimate knowledge of the people he describes.

Miss Johnston, who began by writing romances pure and simple, has
dramatized the story of the Civil War in two able novels, “The Long
Roll” and “Cease Firing.” It is not easy to characterize these
stories in a phrase, nor is it necessary. They are written with a
kind of quiet passion which gives the current sufficient volume to
carry an enormous amount of history without sacrificing dramatic
interest.

[Illustration: F. HOPKINSON SMITH]

[Illustration: MARY JOHNSTON]

[Illustration: JOHN FOX, JR.]

[Illustration: DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL]

Dr. Mitchell, like Dr. Holmes, revealed himself in several
different capacities, as physician, as poet, as essayist, and as
story writer. His novels are characterized by inventiveness, by
dexterity, by freshness of feeling. “The Adventures of François” is
a capital piece of story-telling; while many people regard “Hugh
Wynne” as the best semi-historical story which has appeared in
this country. In other novels Dr. Mitchell showed his skill as a
psychologist.



_SUPPLEMENTARY READING_

[Illustration]

A Study of Prose Fiction                     _Bliss Perry_

Criticism and Fiction                       _W. D. Howells_

Essays on Modern Novelists              _William L. Phelps_

American Prose Masters (Cooper,
Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, Lowell and        _W. C. Brownell_
Henry James)

American Poetry and Fiction              _C. F. Richardson_

Great American Writers                  _Trent and Erskine_

Some American Storytellers         _Frederick Taber Cooper_

American Short Stories            _Charles Baldwin, Editor_

The American Short Story                  _Elias Lieberman_

[Illustration]


_QUESTIONS ANSWERED_

Subscribers desiring further information concerning this subject
can obtain it by writing to

  _The Mentor Association_
  _381 Fourth Avenue, New York City_



[Illustration: HENRY JAMES]



  Henry James, a careful and thoughtful writer, is the subject of
  one of the six intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “American
  Novelists.”

HENRY JAMES

Monograph Number One in The Mentor Reading Course


A number of years ago Henry James was at work on a volume of short
stories. “And when will it be ready?” he was asked.

“Oh, I never know,” he said. “I work by easy stages.”

That sentence gives the keynote to the character of the great
novelist himself and of his writings. He wrote carefully, easily,
and neatly.

Born in New York City on April 15, 1843, Henry James spent most of
his boyhood in Europe. His father was Henry James, the theological
writer, and from him the novelist derived his idiomatic,
picturesque English. His brother became Professor William James,
the psychologist and philosopher, who died in 1910.

Henry James entered Harvard Law School in 1860; but found out soon
that he cared more for literature than for law. His first short
story was published in 1865, and many stories and sketches quickly
followed this.

After 1869 he made his home in England, living in London, or Rye in
Sussex, for the most part. He was a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, and in 1911 received the degree of L. H. D.
from Harvard.

Mr. James dictated all his work to a secretary, and he rewrote
and polished it from a typewritten copy. With his writing he took
infinite pains. His sentences are long and involved at times; but
in spite of this confusing fact his sentences are balanced and
complete.

His whole life showed the same ordered neatness as his books.
His library was carefully selected and shelved. His letters were
always arranged in little piles of the same size. One man tells
that during a call on the novelist he saw him, when the ash had
collected on the end of his cigarette, walk the length of his study
and snip it out of the open window.

Henry James has been called a modern of the moderns as a novelist.
He described contemporary life. His characters are people of
the world; but they are subtle and complex. The human element
predominates.

He is not widely read, because the public finds him hard to read.
As someone said, “His books need to be translated for the average
reader.” This is due in part to his use of long and involved
sentences, and in part to his subject matter.

His career was a happy one. It was long, and was free from serious
mistakes. His talent and point of view were personal. He had a
crowd of imitators; but none of these approached the master in
greatness.

There was one side of the character of Henry James, the man, of
which few people knew. Never did a man in need come to him whom he
did not offer to help. Years ago, when James was deriving an income
of less than $1,500 a year from his writing, a novelist died in
England. He died in poverty, leaving two little children absolutely
alone in the world. A friend assisted the children and wrote to
other literary men asking for help. One literary man, whose income
was over $200,000, was appealed to in vain. Among those from whom
aid was asked was Henry James. A check for $250, more than a sixth
of his whole year’s income, arrived from him by return mail.

Henry James died in London on February 29, 1916.



[Illustration: WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS]



  William Dean Howells, a close student of American character and
  a realist in his writings, is the subject of one of the six
  intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “American Novelists.”

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Monograph Number Two in The Mentor Reading Course


The “Dean of American Letters”--that is what William Dean Howells
is called. He is and has been for half a century the literary
leader of America, and well he deserves the title! James Russell
Lowell said of him that he “is one of the chief honors of our
literature.” He has never written a bad sentence, never struck
a false note. He is the leading representative of the realistic
school of American fiction.

William Dean Howells might with truth be called a “self-made man
of letters.” He was born at Martin Ferry, Ohio, on March 1, 1837.
His father, William Cooper Howells, was a printer and editor, whose
library was large and well chosen for that time. It was in this
library that the future novelist picked up most of his education.
As usual in a small country town, the regular schooling consisted
only of the “three R’s”; but Howells was an omniverous reader. He
particularly enjoyed poetry. It is said that even as a small boy
he wrote verse, setting it into type himself. Whether this was
ever printed is not known; but surely some space in his father’s
newspaper must have been found for these productions of his
juvenile pen.

In 1851 the family fortunes met with disaster, and Howells went to
work as compositor on the Ohio State Journal at a salary of four
dollars a week. He soon graduated into journalism, and at the age
of twenty-two was news editor of the Columbus, Ohio, State Journal.

Howells’ first published work appeared in 1860. The “Poems of Two
Friends” were written with John J. Piatt. He began to contribute to
the Atlantic Monthly, then just founded, about this time also. A
campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln was written by him in 1860.
For this he was appointed consul at Venice, where he remained until
1865. There he studied the Italian language and literature, and
broadened his education considerably.

On his return to the United States he wrote for the New York
Tribune and the Nation for a time. Then in 1866 he became assistant
editor of the Atlantic Monthly, becoming editor six years later. He
was a model magazine editor.

For awhile he contributed to Harper’s Magazine; then he became
editor of the Cosmopolitan, and in 1900 revived “The Editor’s Easy
Chair” for Harper’s. He is at present the writer of this department.

Mr. Howells has received many honorary degrees. Harvard and Yale
have both conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts, while he
has received the degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale, Oxford,
Columbia, and Princeton, and the degree of Doctor of Laws from
Adelbert College. In 1909 he was elected president of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 1885 the novelist has lived in
New York City.

Howells is a great realist and a perfect artist in words. He was
once asked if he never lost himself in his work and was carried
away by what he was writing.

“Never,” he answered. “The essence of achievement is to keep
outside, to be entirely dispassionate, as a sculptor must be,
molding his clay.”

And indeed of all American writers Howells comes the nearest to
success in holding the mirror up to Nature.



[Illustration: THOMAS NELSON PAGE]



  Thomas Nelson Page, a novelist who writes of the fast vanishing
  old order of the South, is the subject of one of the six
  intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “American Novelists.”

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

Monograph Number Three in The Mentor Reading Course


Above all things Thomas Nelson Page is a Virginian, by birth, by
family, and in his writings. Born on the old plantation of Oakland
in Hanover County, Virginia, he can boast of two grandfathers who
were governors of the state, one of these, Thomas Nelson, being
a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It is Virginia and
Virginians “before the war” and during the reconstruction period
that he has sought to portray in his books.

Thomas Nelson Page opened his eyes in old Virginia on April 23,
1853. He was a rather precocious boy. Many a beating did he
receive at school for stealing time from his lessons to write
short stories on his slate for the amusement of his companions.
He entered Washington and Lee University when he was only sixteen
years old. He remained there three years, and then after spending a
little time in Kentucky decided to enter the law department of the
University of Virginia in 1873. He finished the work there in about
half the time usually required, and began practising in Richmond,
where he remained until 1893.

Page had always felt the charm of times gone by. He tried to
follow the law faithfully; but more and more strongly came the
call to picture artistically “a civilization which, once having
sweetened the South, has since well nigh perished from the earth.”
He yearned for the old plantation life,--the stately mansions of
his forefathers, the grandeur to which those men and women of other
days attained, and the overgrown fence rows and fields of his own
country home.

Finally he decided to write. “Marse Chan” was published in 1884,
and won the author immediate recognition. People of both the North
and South were enthusiastic about it. The author himself tells how
he came to write this tale:

“Just then a friend showed me a letter which had been written by
a young girl to her sweetheart in a Georgia regiment, telling him
that she had discovered that she loved him, after all, and that if
he would get a furlough and come home she would marry him; that
she had loved him ever since they had gone to school together in
the little schoolhouse in the woods. Then, as if she feared such a
temptation might be too strong for him, she added a postscript in
these words: ‘Don’t come without a furlough; for if you don’t come
honorably I won’t marry you.’ This letter had been taken from the
pocket of a private dead on the battlefield of one of the battles
around Richmond, and, as the date was only a week before the battle
occurred, its pathos struck me very much. I remember I said ‘The
poor fellow got his furlough through a bullet.’ The idea remained
with me, and I went to my office one morning and began to write
‘Marse Chan,’ which was finished in about a week.”

“In Ole Virginia,” a collection of three stories of negro life
and character, was published in 1887. This is perhaps his most
characteristic work. Many stories, essays, and poems followed.

Uncle Billy in Page’s story “Meh Lady” is a distinct creation.
At the wedding of his mistress and the Union captain in the old,
dismantled home, the minister asks, “Who giveth this woman to be
married to this man?” His lady is without a relative, and Uncle
Billy sees that it is up to him. But he doesn’t want to take the
responsibility; so stepping forward he answers solemnly, “Gord.”

Thomas Nelson Page is never sectional in his writing. Everything
that he writes tends to bring about better feeling between the
North and the South.

He is now ambassador to Rome, appointed by President Wilson.



[Illustration: JAMES LANE ALLEN]



  James Lane Allen, a romanticist of Kentucky, is the subject of
  one of the six intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “American
  Novelists.”

JAMES LANE ALLEN

Monograph Number Four in The Mentor Reading Course


A historical novelist worthy to rank with Nathaniel Hawthorne,
James Lane Allen has been called. Both have given us pictures of
the lives of our forefathers; but, while Hawthorne has shown us
New England, Allen draws the Blue Grass region of Kentucky and its
people.

It may be due to the fact that James Lane Allen was a seventh child
that he has achieved such remarkable success in literature. He was
born in Fayette County, near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1849, the
youngest child of Richard and Helen Allen. He can number among his
paternal ancestors some of the first settlers of Virginia. One of
these ancestors, Richard Allen, moved to Kentucky, where he lived
the easy, hospitable life of a gentleman farmer on his large estate.

Mr. Allen’s mother was a descendant of the Pennsylvania
Scotch-Irish and the Brooks family of Virginia. A native of
Mississippi, she was a lover of nature and literature. She inspired
in her son a love for reading old romances, poetry, and history.

Although Allen was only twelve years old when the storm of Civil
War broke over our country, he was old enough to realize its
horrors and the suffering that it brought to the people of the
South. Just before the beginning of the war his father lost his
fortune; so the formal education that Allen received was small;
but under his mother’s guidance he pursued his studies at home.
Long walks in the fields and forests about his home gave him a keen
insight into nature.

He was graduated from Transylvania University at Lexington,
Kentucky, in 1872, and three years later received a degree of A. M.
from there. A little before this his father died, and James had to
begin teaching in order to meet expenses. He spent a year as master
in a country school, walking six miles to and from the school every
day.

For two years he taught in Missouri and then came back to Kentucky
as a private tutor. He was called to his alma mater to teach, and
two years later Bethany College, in West Virginia, offered him the
chair of Latin and higher English.

He planned to go to Germany for a time; but gave this up when the
idea of becoming a doctor of medicine attracted him. This was when
he was doing graduate work at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But his
love of literature led him to take up writing, and in 1884 he
moved to New York. He arrived there unknown and with no letters of
introduction; but “he took up his abode in a garret and started
out in a very humble way.” He sent letters to the New York Evening
Post, poems to Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly, and essays to
the Critic and the Forum. A criticism of Henry James’ “Portrait of
a Lady” first attracted attention to the young author, and soon
there was a strong demand for his sketches of Kentucky life. “The
Blue Grass Region of Kentucky” was the title given to the collected
volume of these sketches.

Mr. Allen then moved to Cincinnati; but later moved again to
Washington, believing that the capital of the country would be
the future home of literature and art in America. In Washington,
however, he found too much social and official distraction; so he
returned to New York.

“The Kentucky Cardinal,” published in 1895, is one of Mr. Allen’s
best books. It is a sort of pastoral poem in prose, showing the
struggle between Nature and Love. “The Choir Invisible” shows the
noble love of a married woman for a man who is not her husband.

James Lane Allen is best known as a writer of fiction; but he
has also published many critical articles and much verse. He is
recognized as one of the most poetic and dramatic of American
novelists.



[Illustration: WINSTON CHURCHILL]



  Winston Churchill, a master of the historical novel, is the
  subject of one of the six intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating
  “American Novelists.”

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Monograph Number Five in The Mentor Reading Course


Although he graduated from Annapolis in 1894, Winston Churchill
never served in the navy. Instead, immediately after completing
his studies he began writing. He had found out that he could write
when he was still at Annapolis, and decided that fiction rather
than the navy was his line of work. For this the young graduate had
fine equipment. Annapolis gave him self-reliance and determination.
Those graduates of the Naval Academy who have not gone into the
navy have usually been successful in whatever they have done. This
is particularly true in the case of Churchill. Well educated, at
the same time he is full of the joy of life itself, and likes all
sorts of outdoor sports. He is a favorite everywhere.

Winston Churchill was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 10,
1871, and spent the first sixteen years of his life there. From a
school in St. Louis he went to Annapolis. There he became strongly
interested in American history and problems, and made up his mind
to devote his life and energies to these. In the brief intervals
between studies and drills he gathered much of the material that he
afterward used in his novels.

While at Annapolis he stood among the first five or six in his
class. He also reorganized the crew and was captain for a year.
He likewise played a good game of football. Fencing, tennis, and
horseback riding are his favorite sports.

For awhile after graduation he worked on the Army and Navy Journal,
and then joined the staff of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. During this
time he wrote a great deal; but did not attempt to publish these
first experiments in fiction.

He married in 1895 and moved not long afterward to his home at
Cornish, New Hampshire. Churchill was very fortunate. He did not
have to earn a living by doing hackwork, and could take plenty of
time with anything that he wrote.

It is said that genius is the capacity for taking great pains.
Winston Churchill surely illustrates this adage. Hard work,
determination, and a keen sense of values made him the successful
novelist that he is. He was ambitious to write the very best he
knew how. Once, when living in St. Louis, he hired an office and
went down to it as regularly as any other man of business. His
writing was business, and was treated as such.

He rewrote “Richard Carvel” at least five times. He worked from
breakfast until one o’clock, after lunch for two or three hours,
and after dinner often far into the night. This, the first of
three of Winston Churchill’s novels dealing with American history,
became the most popular book in the United States. “The Crisis,”
the second of these historical novels, appeared a few years after
“Richard Carvel,” and in 1904 “The Crossing,” the last of the
trilogy, was published. The background for “The Crisis” was the
Civil War, and “The Crossing” dealt with the great western movement
across the country.

Churchill has served in the New Hampshire legislature, and also
ran for the governorship of that state. “Coniston” was a direct
outgrowth of his political associations. The novel is a story of
politics, with a charming love story running through it.

Winston Churchill is still a young man, and there is every reason
to believe that his best and biggest work is still to come.



[Illustration: OWEN WISTER]



  Owen Wister, a drawer of real, vital characters, is the subject
  of one of the six intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating
  “American Novelists.”

OWEN WISTER

Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course


It is remarkable how many successful writers get into literature
by accident. Very few novelists begin by taking up writing as a
profession: most of them drift into it from other fields. Owen
Wister was no exception to this. He settled down in Philadelphia to
practise law; but the call of the pen was too strong for him. He
was thirty-one years old before he began to write.

Owen Wister is a grandson of Frances Anne Kemble, better known as
Fannie Kemble, the famous actress. He was born on July 14, 1860,
in Philadelphia. When he was ten years old he was taken to Europe,
where he remained three years. On his return to this country he
entered St. Paul’s School, Concord, whence he went to Harvard,
graduating in 1882. He took highest honors in music.

At Harvard he showed that he could write when he produced a
libretto, “Dido and Æneas,” for one of the Hasty Pudding Club
entertainments. When there he also edited one of the college
papers, and in his junior year wrote a poem on Beethoven, which was
published in the Atlantic Monthly.

With the intention of becoming a music critic Wister went abroad
once more. He began the study of composition under Liszt in Paris.
In 1883 he changed his plans and returned to America. His health
was bad; so he went hunting in Wyoming and Arizona.

He found not only new strength, but a new world. The stirring
atmosphere of the West woke in him a desire to write about it;
but he did nothing at this time. He returned east and entered the
Harvard Law School. He graduated in 1888, and a year later was
admitted to the bar in Philadelphia.

But the West had great attraction for him. In the next ten years he
made fifteen trips there. He soon saw that law was not his career.

In 1891 a series of studies and stories of the West by Wister
started in Harper’s Magazine. These were later gathered together in
a volume called “Red Men and White.” All the characters in these
sketches were true to life; the Indian was the Indian of fact, and
the cowboy was the cowboy of reality.

When Wister first began to write a fellow-townsman and critic of
him said, “Owen Wister has written some creditable stories; but so,
to be sure, have many others. His real strength lies in musical
criticism.” This opinion hardly holds good today.

“The Virginian” is the best thing that Wister has done. It is
absolutely realistic. This is a quality of all this author’s work,
as is shown by an anecdote he himself tells:

“Once a cowpuncher listened patiently while I read him a
manuscript. It concerned an event on an Indian reservation. ‘Was
that the Crow reservation?’ he inquired at the finish. I told him
that it was no real reservation and no real event; and his face
expressed displeasure. ‘Why,’ he demanded, ‘do you waste your time
writing what never happened, when you know so many things that did
happen?’”

So well was the story told that the cowboy had believed he was
listening to facts.

“Lady Baltimore” was another successful novel of Wister’s, and
besides he has written several interesting biographies, the best of
which is “The Seven ages of Washington.”

Wister is not only a writer. He has actively fought for decent
government in Philadelphia. At one election he ran for city
councilman of his ward, knowing that his fight was hopeless. He is
an American through and through, and in his books he portrays the
best things in the life of our country.


  PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
  ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, No. 25



Transcriber’s Notes:


The printing error “Univeristy” was changed to “University” on page
18 (law department of the University of Virginia). Other uncommon
spellings were retained.





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