Book 1 - Chapter 3. In The Footsteps Of General Grant

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_ CHAPTER III. In the Footsteps of General Grant

Among the new esthetic and literary enterprises which the Exposition had brought to Chicago was the high-spirited publishing firm of Stone and Kimball, which started out valiantly in the spring of '94. The head of the house, a youth just out of Harvard, was Herbert Stone, son of my friend Melville Stone, manager of the Associated Press. Kimball was Herbert's classmate.

Almost before he had opened his office, Herbert came to me to get a manuscript. "Eugene Field has given us one," he urged, "and we want one from you. We are starting a real publishing house in Chicago and we need your support."

There was no resisting such an appeal. Having cast in my lot with Chicago, it was inevitable that I should ally myself with its newest literary enterprise, a business which expressed something of my faith in the west. Not only did I turn over to Stone the rights to _Main Traveled Roads_, together with a volume of verse--I promised him a book of essays--and a novel.

These aspiring young collegians were joined in '95 by another Harvard man, a tall, dark, smooth-faced youth named Harrison Rhodes, and when, of an afternoon these three missionaries of culture each in a long frock coat, tightly buttoned, with cane, gloves and shining silk hats, paced side by side down the Lake Shore Drive they had the effect of an esthetic invasion, but their crowning audacity was a printed circular which announced that tea would be served in their office in the Caxton Building on Saturday afternoons! Finally as if to convince the city of their utter madness, this intrepid trio adventured the founding of a literary magazine to be called _The Chap Book!_ Culture on the Middle Border had at last begun to hum!

Despite the smiles of elderly scoffers, the larger number of my esthetic associates felt deeply grateful to these devoted literary pioneers, whose taste, enterprise and humor were all sorely needed "in our midst." If not precisely cosmopolitan they were at least in touch with London.

Early in '94 they brought out a lovely edition of _Main Traveled Roads_ and a new book called _Prairie Songs_. Neither of these volumes sold--the firm had no special facilities for selling books, but their print and binding delighted me, and in the autumn of the same year I gladly let them publish a collection of essays called _Crumbling Idols_, a small screed which aroused an astonishing tumult of comment, mostly antagonistic. Walter Page, editor of the _Forum_, in which one of the key-note chapters appeared, told me that over a thousand editorials were written upon my main thesis.

In truth the attention which this iconoclastic declaration of faith received at the hands of critics was out of all proportion to its size. Its explosive power was amazing. As I read it over now, with the clamor of "Cubism," "Imagism" and "Futurism" in my ears, it seems a harmless and on the whole rather reasonable plea for National Spirit and the freedom of youth, but in those days all of my books had mysterious power for arousing opposition, and most reviews of my work were so savage that I made a point of not reading them for the reason that they either embittered me, or were so lacking in discrimination as to have no value. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, I hated contention, therefore I left consideration of these assaults entirely to my publishers. (I learned afterwards that Miss Taft was greatly interested in _Crumbling Idols_. Perhaps she assumed that I was writing at her.)

Meanwhile in _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, the manuscript of which I had carried about with me on many of my lecturing trips, I was attempting to embody something of Chicago life, a task which I found rather difficult. After nine years of life in Boston, the city by the lake seemed depressingly drab and bleak, and my only hope lay in representing it not as I saw it, but as it appeared to my Wisconsin heroine who came to it from Madison and who perceived in it the mystery and the beauty which I had lost. To Rose, fresh from the farm, it was a great capital, and the lake a majestic sea. As in _A Spoil of Office_, I had tried to maintain the point of view of a countryman, so now I attempted to embody in _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, a picture of Chicago as an ambitious young girl from the Wisconsin farm would see it.

In my story Rose Dutcher made her way from Bluff Siding to the State University, and from Madison to a fellowship in the artistic and literary Chicago, of which I was a part. Her progress was intended to be typical. I said, "I will depict the life of a girl who has ambitious desires, and works toward her goal as blindly and as determinedly as a boy." It was a new thesis so far as Western girls were concerned, and I worked long and carefully on the problem, carrying the manuscript back and forth with me for two years.

As spring came on, I again put "Rose" in my trunk and hastened back to West Salem in order to build the two-story bay-window which I had minutely planned, which was, indeed, almost as important as my story and much more exciting. To begin the foundation of that extension was like setting in motion the siege of a city! It was extravagant--reckless--nevertheless assisted by a neighbor who was clever at any kind of building, I set to work in boyish, illogical enthusiasm.

Mother watched us tear out and rebuild with uneasy glance but when the windows were in and a new carpet with an entire "parlor suite" to match, arrived from the city, her alarm became vocal. "You mustn't spend your money for things like these. We can't afford such luxuries."

"Don't you worry about my money," I replied, "There's more where I found this. There's nothing too good for you, mother."

How sweet and sane and peaceful and afar off those blessed days seem to me as I muse over this page. At the village shops sirloin steak was ten cents a pound, chickens fifty cents a pair and as for eggs--I couldn't give ours away, at least in the early summer,--and all about us were gardens laden with fruit and vegetables, more than we could eat or sell or feed to the pigs. Wars were all in the past and life a simple matter of working out one's own individual problems. Never again shall I feel that confidence in the future, that joy in the present. I had no doubts--none that I can recall.

My brother came again in June and joyfully aided me in my esthetic pioneering. We amazed the town by seeding down a potato patch and laying out a tennis court thereon, the first play-ground of its kind in Hamilton township, and often as we played of an afternoon, farmers on their way to market with loads of grain or hogs, paused to watch our game and make audible comment on our folly. We also bought a lawn-mower, the second in the town, and shaved our front yard. We took down the old picket fence in front of the house and we planted trees and flowers, until at last some of the elderly folk disgustedly exclaimed, "What won't them Garland boys do next!"

Without doubt we "started something" in the sleepy village. Others following our example went so far as to take down their own fences and to buy lawn-mowers. That we were planning waterworks and a bath-room remained a secret--this was too revolutionary to be spoken of for the present. We were forced to make progress slowly.

_Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, published during this year, was attacked quite as savagely as _Main Traveled Roads_ had been, and this criticism saddened and depressed me. With a foolish notion that the Middle West should take a moderate degree of pride in me, I resented this condemnation. "Am I not making in my small way the same sort of historical record of the west that Whittier and Holmes secured for New England?" I asked my friends. "Am I not worthy of an occasional friendly word, a message of encouragement?"

Of course I should have risen superior to these local misjudgments, and in fact I did keep to my work although only a faint voice here and there was raised in my defence. Even after _Rose_ had been introduced to London by William Stead, and Henry James and Israel Zangwill and James Barrie had all written in praise of her, the editors of the western papers still maintained a consistently militant attitude. Perhaps I should have taken comfort from the fact that they considered me worth assaulting, but that kind of comfort is rather bleak at its best, especially when the sales of your book are so small as to be confirmatory of the critic.

Without doubt this persistent antagonism, this almost universal depreciation of my stories of the plains had something to do with intensifying the joy with which I returned to the mountain world and its heroic types, at any rate I spent July and August of that year in Colorado and New Mexico, making many observations, which turned out to have incalculable value to me in later days. From a roundup in the Current Creek country I sauntered down through Salida, Ouray, Telluride, Durango and the Ute Reservation, a circuit which filled my mind with noble suggestions for stories and poems, a tour which profoundly influenced my life as well as my writing.

The little morocco-covered notebook in which I set down some of my impressions is before me as I write. It still vibrates with the ecstasy of that enthusiasm. Sentences like these are frequent. "From the dry hot plains, across the blazing purple of the mesa's edge, I look away to where the white clouds soar in majesty above the serrate crest of Uncomphagre. Oh, the splendor and mystery of those cloud-hid regions!... A coyote, brown and dry and hot as any tuft of desert grass drifts by.... Into the coolness and sweetness and cloud-glory of this marvelous land.... Gorgeous shadows are in motion on White House Peak.... Along the trail as though walking a taut wire, a caravan of burros streams, driven by a wide-hatted graceful horseman.... Twelve thousand feet! I am brother to the eagles now! The matchless streams, the vivid orange-colored meadows. The deep surf-like roar of the firs, the wailing sigh of the wind in the grass--a passionate longing wind." Such are my jottings.

In these pages I can now detect the beginnings of a dozen of my stories, a score of my poems. No other of my trips was ever so inspirational.

Not content with the wonders of Colorado I drifted down to Santa Fe and Isleta, with Charles Francis Browne and Hermon MacNeill, and got finally to Holbrook, where we outfitted and rode away across the desert, bound for the Snake Dance at Walpi. It would seem that we had decided to share all there was of romance in the South West. They were as insatiate as I.

For a week we lived on the mesa at Walpi in the house of Heli. Aided by Dr. Fewkes of Washington, we saw most of the phases of the snake ceremonies. The doctor and his own men were camped at the foot of the mesa, making a special study of the Hopi and their history. Remote, incredibly remote it all seemed even at that time, and some of that charm I put into an account of it which _Harper's_ published--one of the earliest popular accounts of the Snake Dance.

One night as I was standing on the edge of the cliff looking out over the sand to the west, I saw a train of pack horses moving toward Walpi like a jointed, canvas-colored worm. It was the outfit of another party of "tourists" coming to the dance, and half an hour later a tall, lean, brown and smiling man of middle life rode up the eastern trail at the head of his train.

Greeting me pleasantly he asked, "Has the ceremony begun?"

"The snakes are in process of being gathered," I replied, "but you are in time for the most interesting part of the festival."

In response to a question he explained, "I've been studying the Cliff-Dwellings of the Mesa Verde. My name is Pruden. I am from New York."

It was evident that "The Doctor" (as his guides called him) was not only a man of wide experience on the trail, but a scientist as well, and I found him most congenial.

We spent the evening together, and together we witnessed the mysterious snake dance which the natives of Walpi give every other year--a ceremony so incredibly primitive that it carried me back into the stone age, and three days later (leaving Browne and MacNeill to paint and sculpture the Hopi) we went to Zuni and Acoma and at last to the Grand Canon of the Colorado, a trip which laid upon my mind a thousand glorious impressions of the desert and its life. It was so beautiful, so marvelous that sand and flies and hunger and thirst were forgotten.

Aside from its esthetic delight, this summer turned out to be the most profitable season of my whole career. It marks a complete 'bout face in my march. Coming just after _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, it dates the close of my prairie tales and the beginning of a long series of mountain stories. Cripple Creek and the Current Creek country suggested _The Eagle's Heart_, _Witches' Gold_, _Money Magic_, and a dozen shorter romances. In truth every page of my work thereafter was colored by the experiences of this glorious savage splendid summer.

The reasons are easy to define. All my emotional relationships with the "High Country" were pleasant, my sense of responsibility was less keen, hence the notes of resentment, of opposition to unjust social conditions which had made my other books an offense to my readers were almost entirely absent in my studies of the mountaineers. My pity was less challenged in their case. Lonely as their lives were, it was not a sordid loneliness. The cattle rancher was at least not a drudge. Careless, slovenly and wasteful as I knew him to be, he was not mean. He had something of the Centaur in his bearing. Marvelous horsemanship dignified his lean figure and lent a notable grace to his gestures. His speech was picturesque and his observations covered a wide area. Self-reliant, fearless, instant of action in emergency, his character appealed to me with ever-increasing power.

I will not say that I consciously and deliberately cut myself off from my prairie material, the desertion came about naturally. Swiftly, inevitably, the unplowed valleys, the waterless foothills and the high peaks, inspired me, filled me with desire to embody them in some form of prose, of verse.

Laden with a myriad impressions of Indians, mountaineers and miners, I returned to my home as a bee to its hive, and there, during October, in my quiet chamber worked fast and fervently to transform my rough notes into fiction. Making no attempt to depict the West as some one else had seen it, or might thereafter see it, I wrote of it precisely as it appeared to me, verifying every experience, for, although I had not lingered long in any one place--a few weeks at most--I had observed closely and my impressions were clearly and deeply graved.

In fear of losing that freshness of delight, that emotion which gave me inspiration, I had made copious notes while in the field and although I seldom referred to them after I reached my desk, the very act of putting them down had helped to organize and fix them in my mind.

All of September and October was spent at the Homestead. Each morning I worked at my writing, and in the afternoon I drove my mother about the country or wrought some improvement to the place.

* * * * *

In the midst of these new literary enthusiasms I received a message which had a most disturbing effect on my plans. It was a letter from Sam McClure whose new little magazine was beginning to show astonishing vitality. "I want you to write for me a life of Ulysses Grant. I want it to follow Ida Tarbell's _Lincoln_ which is now nearing an end. Come to New York and talk it over."

This request arrested me in my fictional progress. I was tempted to accept this commission, not merely because of the editor's generous terms of payment but for the deeper reason that _Grant_ was a word of epic significance in my mind. From the time when I was three years of age, this great name had rung in my ears like the sound of a mellow bell. I knew I could write Grant's story--but--I hesitated.

"It is a mighty theme," I replied, "and yet I am not sure that I ought to give so much of my time at this, the most creative period of my life. It may change the whole current of my imagination."

My father, whose attitude toward the great Commander held much of hero-worship and who had influenced my childish thinking, influenced me now, but aside from his instruction I had come to consider Grant's career more marvelous than that of any other American both by reason of its wide arc of experience and its violent dramatic contrasts. It lent itself to epic treatment. With a feeling that if I could put this deeply significant and distinctively American story into a readable volume, I should be adding something to American literature as well as to my own life, I consented. Dropping my fictional plans for the time I became the historian.

In order to make the biography a study from first-hand material I planned a series of inspirational trips which filled in a large part of '96. Beginning at Georgetown, Ohio, where I found several of Grant's boyhood playmates, I visited Ripley, where he went to school, and then at the Academy at West Point I spent several days examining the records. In addition, I went to each of the barracks at which young Grant had been stationed. Sacketts Harbor, Detroit and St. Louis yielded their traditions. A month in Mexico enabled me to trace out on foot not only the battle grounds of Monterey, but that of Vera Cruz, Puebla and Molina del Rey. No spot on which Grant had lived long enough to leave a definite impression was neglected. In this work I had the support of William Dean Howells who insisted on my doing the book bravely.

In pursuit of material concerning Grant's later life I interviewed scores of his old neighbors in Springfield and Galena, and in pursuit of his classmates, men like Buckner and Longstreet and Wright and Franklin, I took long journeys. In short I spared no pains to give my material a first-hand quality, and in doing this I traveled nearly thirty thousand miles, making many interesting acquaintances, in more than half the states of the Union.

During all these activities, however, the old Wisconsin farmhouse remained my pivot. In my intervals of rest I returned to my study and made notes of the vividly contrasting scenes through which I had passed. Orizaba and Jalapa, Perote with its snowy mountains rising above hot, cactus-covered plains, and Mexico City became almost dream-like by contrast with the placid beauty of Neshonoc. Some of my experiences, like "the Passion Play at Coyocan," for example, took on a medieval quality, so incredibly remote was its scene,--and yet, despite all this travel, notwithstanding my study of cities and soldiers and battle maps, I could not forget to lay out my garden. I kept my mother supplied with all the necessaries and a few of the luxuries of life.

In my note book of that time I find these lines: "I have a feeling of swift change in art and literature here in America. This latest trip to New York has shocked and saddened me. To watch the struggle, to feel the bitterness and intolerance of the various groups--to find one clique of artists set against another, to know that most of those who come here will fail and die--is appalling. The City is filled with strugglers, students of art, ambitious poets, journalists, novelists, writers of all kinds--I meet them at the clubs--some of them will be the large figures of 1900, most of them will have fallen under the wheel--This bitter war of Realists and Romanticists will be the jest of those who come after us, and they in their turn will be full of battle ardor with other cries and other banners. How is it possible to make much account of the cries and banners of to-day when I know they will be forgotten of all but the students of literary history?"

My contract with _McClure's_ called for an advance of fifty dollars a week (more money than I had ever hoped to earn) and with this in prospect I purchased a new set of dinner china and a piano, which filled my mother's heart with delight. As I thought of her living long weeks in the old homestead with only my invalid aunt for company my conscience troubled me, and as it was necessary for me to go to Washington to complete my history, I attempted to mitigate her loneliness by buying a talking machine, through which I was able send her messages and songs. She considered these wax cylinders a poor substitute for my actual voice, but she got some entertainment from them by setting the machine going for the amazement of her callers.

November saw me settled in Washington, hard at work on my history, but all the time my mind was working, almost unconsciously, on my new fictional problems, "After all, I am a novelist," I wrote to Fuller, and I found time even in the midst of my historical study to compose an occasional short story of Colorado or Mexico.

Magazine editors were entirely hospitable to me now, for my tales of the Indian and the miner had created a friendlier spirit among their readers. My later themes were, happily, quite outside the controversial belt. Concerned less with the hopeless drudgery, and more with the epic side of western life, I found myself almost popular. My critics, once off their guard, were able to praise, cautiously it is true, but to praise. Some of them assured me with paternal gravity that I might, by following their suggestions become a happy and moderately successful writer, and this prosperity, you may be sure, was reflected to some degree in the dining room of the old Homestead.

My father, though glad of the shelter of the Wisconsin hills in winter, was too vigorous,--far too vigorous--to be confined to the limits of a four-acre garden patch, and when I urged him to join me in buying one of the fine level farms in our valley he agreed, but added "I must sell my Dakota land first."

With this I was forced to be content. Though sixty years old he still steered the six-horse header in harvest time, tireless and unsubdued. Times were improving slowly, very slowly in Dakota but opportunities for selling his land were still remote. He was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices. "I will not give it away," he grimly declared.

My return to the Homestead during the winter holidays brought many unforgettable experiences. Memories of those winter mornings come back to me--sunrises with steel-blue shadows lying along the drifts, whilst every weed, every shrub, feathered with frost, is lit with subtlest fire and the hills rise out of the mist, domes of brilliant-blue and burning silver. Splashes of red-gold fill all the fields, and small birds, flying amid the rimy foliage, shake sparkles of fire from their careless wings.

It was the antithesis of Indian summer, and yet it had something of the same dream-like quality. Its beauty was more poignant. The rounded tops of the red-oaks seemed to float in the sparkling air in which millions of sun-lit frost flakes glittered. All forms and lines were softened by this falling veil, and the world so adorned, so transfigured, filled the heart with a keen regret, a sense of pity that such a world should pass.

At such times I was glad of my new home, and my mother found in me only the confident and hopeful son. My doubts of the future, my discouragements of the present I carefully concealed. _

Read next: Book 1: Chapter 4. Red Men And Buffalo

Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 2. I Return To The Saddle

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