VII. The Beginning of American Fiction

He was born in Philadelphia, in 1771. Like Woolman, he was of Quaker descent and training; but he soon broke away from the gentle discipline, being influenced by the writings of Godwin, that same English radical who exercised an unfortunate influence over the poet Shelley. As a child he was precocious, and in his first school made havoc of his health by overstudy. Exiled by disease from the sports of vigorous boys, he had two unfailing resources,—to pore over books by the hour, and to ramble alone in the big woods. Here his imagination, set loose from his frail body, led him away to glorious adventures with wild beasts and Indians. But wherever he went, like Wigglesworth he dragged the two millstones of disease and morbidness along with him.

Schooldays over, and with them the golden age, Brown took up the burden of life in a lawyer's office. Presently he wearied of the law, as did Irving later, and abandoned it to commit himself definitely to literature, beginning with essays and poems for the new magazines. Philadelphia now seemed to him strait and narrow—though Franklin had found it broad enough when he ran away from Boston—and Brown migrated to New York. Here all his important work was crowded into a few years, during which he battled daily for health, with a heroism that suggests Lanier. He produced his first complete novel, Wieland , in 1798. The next year, while publishing the Monthly Magazine , he wrote Ormond  and the first part of Arthur Mervyn ; and in 1801 appeared three novels, Edgar Huntley , Clara Howard  and Jane Talbot . It was a large amount of work, and we still feel the haste, the fever, the anxiety of it. Whether his genius had burned itself out like a candle, or whether he sought to turn his fame into fortune by publishing a successful magazine, we do not know. Suddenly he abandoned romance, went back to Philadelphia to establish the Literary Magazine (1803–1808), and spent his failing energy on essays and sketches of no consequence.

The tragedy of Brown's life is suggested by the fact that he died of consumption, in 1810, before his powers had reached maturity; the heroism of it may be inferred from one of his last letters, in which he says that a single half-hour of health was all that he could remember. And he adds, with a touch of infinite pathos, that had his pilgrimage been longer he might have lighted at last on hope.

The story of Edgar Huntley  is a strange combination,—a minute analysis of human emotion, set in a rush of stirring incidents and hairbreadth escapes. The one suggests the earlier work of Richardson, who gave us the first modern novel; the other sets our feet in the trail which Cooper followed in his Leatherstocking romances. A single adventure may serve to show the spirit of the entire work. The hero goes to sleep in his bed, and knows that he slept as usual, for he remembers every detail:

"I have said that I slept. My memory assures me of this; it informs me of the previous circumstances of my laying aside my clothes, of placing the light upon a chair within reach of my pillow, of throwing myself upon the bed and of gazing on the rays of the moon reflected on the wall and almost obscured by those of the candle. I remember my occasional relapse into fits of incoherent fancies, the harbingers of sleep. I remember, as it were, the instant when my thought ceased to flow and my senses were arrested by the leaden wand of forgetfulness."

Here is a mental picture which we instantly recognize as true. When the hero wakes from his natural sleep, he is bruised and sore, as if beaten with a club; he is at the bottom of a pit in gross darkness. As he feels his way out, in a chaos of doubt and fear, he meets a ferocious panther and slays the beast. Then, attracted by a dim light, he stumbles upon a band of Indians with a captive white girl, sleeping around a fire in a gloomy cave. So far this is almost as good as the Arabian Nights , wherein castles grow like toadstools, and marvels come and go like the clouds. We enjoy the adventures, and especially the Indians, who are somewhat truer to nature than are Cooper's smoky philosophers; but there is a mystery about this hero, who goes to sleep in his bed and wakes up in "antres vast and desarts idle," which is not cleared up till we learn that he is a somnambulist—a lame and impotent conclusion.

The same weakness is shown in all of Brown's novels. We find dark and direful strangers, secret murders, conspiracies galore; and at the end some wretchedly inadequate motive to account for them all. In Wieland , for example, a man in the midst of ideal happiness is called by a supernatural voice to murder his wife and children. Horrors upon horrors attend this awful mystery; and at the end we find only the "squeak and gibber" of a ventriloquist. Yet there is a dramatic power and intensity in the story which makes us read on:

"I now come to the mention of a person with whose name the most turbulent sensations are connected. It is with a shuddering reluctance that I enter on the province of describing him. . . . My blood is congealed and my fingers are palsied when I call up his image. Shame upon my cowardly and infirm heart! Hitherto I have proceeded with some degree of composure; but now I must pause. I mean not that dire remembrance shall subdue my courage or baffle my design; but this weakness cannot be immediately conquered. I must desist for a little while."

After such an introduction we insist on knowing what happened. Our interest is aroused, first, by the fact that the hero is introduced under startling conditions, and then is allowed to tell his own story. Just as in Othello  we read with a more lively interest when the Moor begins to relate his adventures, so in all Brown's stories the characters make a direct appeal to the reader. Another device, which he uses excellently, is to paint a scene so vividly that we expect some adventure to follow. As the oldest teller of ghost stories put his hearers on tiptoe for the specter by describing the dark night, the fearsome old house, the moaning wind, so Brown plays upon our imagination to make us anticipate the horror before it appears. Though he lacks the highest qualities as a writer, it is much to say of a first novelist that he knows how to attract attention, and to paint vivid pictures of human emotion against a suitable natural background.

Now "sensibility" is defined as the ability to feel sensations and emotions; in literature it means unusual sensitiveness, delicacy of feeling, responsiveness to every emotion of pleasure or pain. At the close of the eighteenth century "sensibility" was a kind of fetish, just as "humor" was in the days of Ben Jonson. In the romances of this period men were not simply glad or sorry; they had transports of joy, paroxysms of grief; they danced up and down the gamut of feeling as if human nature were a stretched nerve, vibrating to every breath of emotion. Coupled with this sensibility was a mawkish and garrulous sentimentality, repulsive to us now, but very dear to an age that considered it proper for a lady to talk like Richardson's Pamela , to "fall senseless on the sofa," or "sink fainting into the arms of an attendant" at every unusual announcement

That Brown was influenced by the prevailing literary fad is shown by the interest which his characters take in their sensibilities. The hero may be rescuing a girl from Indians, or dozing in front of his own fire; but always, everywhere, he is making minute analysis of his own feelings. So far Brown follows the fashion. His independence is shown by his choice of American themes, and by the fact that, in portraying human feeling, he is more of a psychologist than a sentimentalist, more interested in the scientific explanation of an emotion than in the prevailing book of etiquette. It was this new variation of an old theme that made him popular, and if we read him candidly, we shall find that he was probably in advance of most of his English and German contemporaries.

The second characteristic of Brown's novels is the sense of horror that pervades them; and here our author reflects, not simply the fashion of his age, but the tendency of humanity in all ages to create for itself imaginary fears. Wherever you find him, whether in a primitive cave or in a modern office, man is always surrounded by mystery. He stands, as the first Colonists stood, fronting an unknown sea with an unknown wilderness at his back; and his imagination always peoples the unknown with fantastic terrors. Dragons and doppelgänger  were very real to the Anglo-Saxons; enchantment and witchcraft to all peoples of the Middle Ages. In Brown's day English romancers, after a period of general skepticism, were filling the unknown with ghosts, supernatural voices, and other horrors as artificial as their own periwigs. He had a vivid imagination, well suited to creating terror out of mystery; but he had also a practical balance-wheel from his Quaker forbears, and he shared the common-sense spirit of his nation. The result was that he first created a mysterious horror, and then explained it by somnambulism, or ventriloquism, or some other ism  dear to a people that had just begun to dabble in science—a people who demanded a sign, like those of old, but who wanted also some kind of explanation. So Brown was hailed abroad as the man who had "Americanized" their "Gothic" romance, as Franklin's lightning rods had "Americanized" their houses.

There are other things worthy of note in Brown's neglected romances: their stilted dialogue, so characteristic of an age which insisted that literary persons must speak unnaturally; their photographic reproduction of the dress and manners of the gentlefolk of those days; their keen observations and admirable descriptions of nature; their vivid pictures of the scourge of smallpox, which compare favorably with Defoe's famous description of the plague in London. All these are interesting; but we emphasize only the "sensibility" and the horror of mystery which give the keynote to all his work. And instead of criticizing Brown for his evident faults, we are impelled to praise him for his unnoticed virtues. It is no small triumph for any novelist, while reflecting the literary fashions of his age, to go beyond his contemporaries in the direction of truth and naturalness. He was, we repeat, the founder of the American novel, and his successors were Cooper and Hawthorne.

The literature of the period shows the effect of all these historical movements. The new social life demanded newspapers, magazines, brighter and more varied types of literature than had prevailed during the Colonial period. The turmoil after the Stamp Act led to a rapid development of popular oratory; the strife between Patriots and Tories produced numerous ballads and satires; the struggle over the Constitution developed a new type of political writing which has been well called "citizen literature." In general, the literature of the Revolution has a practical and worldly bent, in contrast to the religious spirit of Colonial writings.

In our study we noted, first, the general characteristics of Revolutionary literature, the contrast between its imitative poetry and its individualistic prose. The citizen literature especially reflects a strong, original and creative impulse of the American mind. Next we considered the life and works of Benjamin Franklin, who marks the transition from the Colonial to the Revolutionary age. He was a voluminous writer, but his aim was always practical, or utilitarian, rather than artistic. He is remembered in our literature chiefly by his Autobiography .

Of the Revolutionary orators, James Otis and Patrick Henry were chosen as typical of the period. The typical statesman was Washington, the object of whose life and work was to establish nationality in America. Two other statesmen, Hamilton and Jefferson, were studied at length, because they were leaders, and are still the types, of the two great parties that are found in every free government. The most memorable literary work of Jefferson was the Declaration of Independence, which we considered as a piece of literature rather than as a state paper. The chief work of Hamilton was a series of political essays included in The Federalist .

In studying the poetry of the Revolution we noted, first, the songs, ballads and verse satires in which Patriot and Loyalist reflected their political convictions and animosities; second, the efforts of the so-called Hartford Wits to establish a national rather than provincial poetry; and third, the life and works of Philip Freneau. The latter's poems fall into two significant classes: political songs and satires, reflecting the turmoil of the age; and occasional poems of nature and humanity, which reveal Freneau as an American forerunner of the romantic movement in modern poetry.

Of the many miscellaneous writers of the Revolution the two most notable are Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense  and The Crisis  are among the most powerful pamphlets that ever influenced a nation's history; and John Woolman, whose Journal  has been called "the sweetest and purest autobiography in the language."

At the end of the Revolutionary period we note the definite appearance of the American novel. Some thirty-five works of fiction, mostly of the exaggerated romantic type, were written before 1800; but their authors are now unknown even by name to most readers. The one fiction writer of the period who deserves recognition is Charles Brockden Brown. He was the first professional man of letters in America, and he may be regarded as the founder of the American novel. His models were the German and English authors of the so-called Gothic romances,—harrowing stories that combined mystery with ghostly horror, sensibility with sentimentality, and romance with gross exaggeration. Brown showed considerable originality, and gave a distinctly American color to his work by laying the scene of his romance in his own country, by using the incidents of Indian and Colonial life for his literary material, and by giving a practical or scientific explanation of the mysteries and horrors which filled his pages. In his work we find suggestions of Poe, Cooper and Hawthorne, the three greatest American writers of fiction.

There are no convenient editions of Brown, Paine or Freneau. Selections from these authors, and from all others mentioned in the text, may be found in Trent and Wells, Cairns, Carpenter's American Prose, Bronson's American Poems, etc. See "Selections" in the General Bibliography.

History . Winsor, Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution; Fiske, American Revolution, and Critical Period of American History; Hart, Formation of the Union; Walker, Making of the Nation; Fisher, Struggle for American Independence; Sloane, French War and the Revolution; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.

Political . Gordy, Political Parties, 1787–1828, 2 vols.; Stanwood, History of the Presidency.

Biographical . Lives of important historical characters, each in one volume as a rule, in American Statesmen series; Parton, Life of Franklin, of Jefferson, of Burr; Rives, Life and Times of James Madison, 3 vols.; Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime (Washington, Jefferson, Randolph); Sparks, Men who made the Nation; Parker, Historic Americans; Green, Pioneer Mothers of America, 3 vols.; C. F. Adams, John Adams's Diary.

Supplementary . Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, Montcalm and Wolfe; Hinsdale, The Old Northwest; Fiske, American Political Ideas; Earle, Stage Coach and Tavern Days, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl of 1771; Crawford, Romantic Days in the Early Republic.

Literature . Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, 2 vols.; (Putnam), includes all the writers of the period. Miss Loshe, Early American Novel (1907); Magoon, Orators of the American Revolution (1848); Sears, American Literature in the Colonial and National Periods (1892). For works on individual writers, Franklin, Freneau, etc., see below.

Collateral Reading . Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times: Martha Washington, by Anne Wharton; Mercy Warren, by Alice Brown; Dolly Madison, by Maud Goodwin; Catherine Schuyler, by Mary Humphreys, etc. (Scribner); Green, Pioneer Mothers of America; Mills, Through the Gates of Old Romance (a book of the love stories of Freneau, Benjamin West, and other notable men of Revolutionary times).

Franklin . Texts: Works, edited by A. H. Smyth; by Bigelow (1887). Sayings of Poor Richard, edited by Ford (Putnam). Autobiography, etc. (see Selections for Reading, above).

Biography and Criticism: Life (including the Autobiography supplemented by many letters), edited by Bigelow, 3 vols.; Life, by McMaster, in American Men of Letters; by Morse, in American Statesmen; by Parton, 2 vols.; Ford, The Many-Sided Franklin; Fisher, The True Benjamin Franklin, in "True" Biographies. Franklin bibliography, by Ford (Brooklyn, 1889).

Hamilton . Texts: Works, edited by Lodge, 9 vols. (1885). The Federalist, edited by Dawson; by Ford; by Lodge.

Biography and Criticism: Life, by Morse, 2 vols.; by Lodge, in American Statesmen; Sumner, Alexander Hamilton (a critical study, in Makers of America series); Culbertson, Alexander Hamilton (Yale University Press, 1910); Basset, The Federalist System, in the American Nation, edited by Hart, Vol. II.

Jefferson . Texts: Works, 10 vols., edited by Ford (1892–1899).

Biography and Criticism: Life by Schouler, in Makers of America; by Morse, in American Statesmen; by Curtis, in "True" Biographies; by Parton, by Watson, etc.; Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime; Channing, The Jeffersonian System, in Hart's American Nation, Vol. XII.

The Hartford Wits . Texts: No complete editions are available. Dwight's Conquest of Canaan (Hartford, 1875) and Travels in New England and New York, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1821); Trumbull's Works, with Memoir, 2 vols. (Hartford, 1820); Trumbull's M'Fingal, edited by Lossing (1881).

Biography and Criticism: Tyler, Three Men of Letters (1895); Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (1895); Sheldon, Pleiades of Connecticut (Atlantic Monthly, 1865); Trumbull, Origin of M'Fingal (Historical Magazine, 1868).

Freneau . Texts: No complete edition of works; Poems, edited by Pattee, 3 vols. (Princeton University Library, 1902–1907); Poems of 1786, in Library of Old Authors; Poems of the Revolution, edited by Duyckinck (1865).

Biography and Criticism: Life, by Mary Austin (1901); Forman, Political Activities of Philip Freneau (Johns Hopkins University Studies); More, in Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series (1908); Greenslet, in Atlantic Monthly (December, 1904).

Brown . Texts: Works, 6 vols. (Philadelphia, 1857, revised 1887).

Biography and Criticism: Life, by Dunlap, 2 vols. (1815); by Prescott, in Biographical and Critical Miscellanies; and in Spark's Library of American Biography. Miss Loshe, Early American Novel; Erskine, Leading American Novelists; Morse, in Century Magazine, Vol. XXVI; Brown's connection with Shelley, in Dowden's Life of Shelley.

Historical Fiction . Older Romances of the Revolution : Catherine Sedgwick, The Linwoods; Lydia Child, The Rebels; Cooper, The Spy, The Pilot, Lionel Lincoln; Kennedy, Horse-Shoe Robinson; Paulding, Old Continental; Simms, The Scout, The Partisan, Katherine Walton.

Later Romances : Hawthorne, Septimius Felton; Cooke, Henry St. John; Winthrop, Edwin Brothertoft; Butterworth, Patriot Schoolmaster; Ford, Janice Meredith; Thompson, Alice of Old Vincennes; Frederick, In the Valley; Mitchell, Hugh Wynne; Harrison, Son of the Old Dominion; Coggeswell, The Regicides; Eggleston, A Carolina Cavalier; Churchill, Richard Carvel.

Books for Young People . Revolutionary History : Fiske, Irving's Washington and His Country (Ginn and Company); Dickson, Hundred Years of Warfare, 1680–1789 (Macmillan); Fiske, War of Independence (Houghton); Baldwin, Conquest of the Old Northwest (American Book Co.); Jenks, When America Won Liberty (Crowell); Hart, Camps and Firesides of the Revolution (Macmillan).

Revolutionary Stories : Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair; Coffin, Boys of '76; Helen Cleveland, Stories of the Brave Old Days; Lillian Price, Lads and Lassies of Other Days.

1. The period in which our independence was won is called the Age of Revolution: what events in European history and literature justify the title? What did America contribute to the age, in matters of government and literature?

2. Read the historical introduction to the Revolutionary period, and tell in your own words what effect each historic movement had upon our literature. It is said that, in passing from Colonial to Revolutionary times, our literature shifted its center of interest from heaven to earth; explain, criticize, challenge the statement. What common characteristics do you find in Colonial and Revolutionary literature?

3. What is meant by citizen literature? Why should it appear during the Revolutionary period? What are its qualities? What works of the present day belong to this class? How do they compare in spirit and motive with the earlier works?

4. Explain the prevalence of satire and of ballads in Revolutionary poetry. Describe the two main parties during the Revolution, and name some of the literary works of each. Why are Patriot ballads in general better known than ballads of the Loyalists? How do you account for the fact that the wretched doggerel of "Yankee Doodle" is remembered, while better ballads are forgotten?

5. How do you account for the fact that Revolutionary prose is better, more original and independent, than Revolutionary verse? (Note that Franklin's early prose is imitative.) In what ways does "the American spirit" reveal itself in both prose and poetry?

6. Quote from any of Washington's later and earlier works to show that he was animated by the national rather than by the provincial spirit. What is the value of his Farewell Address? Why should it be studied as a "classic"? It is said that the Farewell Address was the work of Washington and his friends, Hamilton being prominent among the latter: what evidence of composite authorship do you find in the work itself?

7. What two parties were prominent at the time of the adoption of the Constitution? Do you see any connection between these two parties and the Whigs and Tories of the Revolution? or between them and the two main political parties of the present day? Fiske has said that in politics all men are followers of either Hamilton or Jefferson; criticize the statement.

8. In what ways were Hamilton and Jefferson typical of two great parties? Give a brief sketch of Hamilton's life, and of his service to America. What literary work made him known before the Revolution? By what is he now remembered? What is the general character of The Federalist ?

9. Sketch briefly Jefferson's life and service, and note the contrast with Hamilton. What qualities in Jefferson led to his being called at various times to speak for a large party or for the nation? What are his chief literary works? The Declaration of Independence has been called an Anglo-Saxon battle song; why? What national and race qualities does it reveal?

10. Franklin . (a ) In what way does Franklin mark the transition from the Colonial to the Revolutionary age? He has been called "the teacher of a new order in America"; give your reasons for upholding or denying the allegation.

(b ) What typical character, and of what sort, did Franklin introduce in his almanac? Show any resemblances between this character and the hero of any modern story, such as David Harum  or Eben Holden . Make a list of Franklin's maxims that are still in daily use. Show the mixture of truth and error in these sayings.

(c ) Quote from some of the minor works you have read to illustrate Franklin's humor. Do you find any definite resemblances between Franklin's humor and that of later writers, Holmes, Stockton or Mark Twain for instance? It is customary to speak of "American humor"; what is meant by this? And how does American differ from English or German humor?

(d ) Why should Franklin's Autobiography  be studied as a "classic"? What are its qualities of style? How do you account for Franklin's careless disregard of the work, and for the world's keen appreciation of it? As a matter of speculation, if such a book had been written by an unknown author, would you be interested in it?

(e ) Make a brief comparison between Franklin and Edwards, having in mind the careers of the two men, the interest of their works, their style, their motive in writing, and the different classes of readers to whom they appealed. Explain the statement that these two men represent the two sides of the American mind.

11. Who was John Woolman? An English critic, Charles Lamb, wrote, "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart, and love the early Quakers"; why should one exhortation suggest the other? What is the general character of Woolman's Journal ? Can you explain why a modern college president should place it among the great and ennobling books of the world?

12. What influence did Paine exert upon the American Revolution? Describe briefly Common Sense  and The Crisis . To what American traits did they appeal? Hundreds of strong political pamphlets appeared before the Revolution; how do you account for the extraordinary success of Common Sense ?

13. Divide Freneau's poems into two main classes, and show that in each class Freneau was a reflection of his age. What is the present value of his satires? of his romantic poems? Who were his English models? In what ways did he show originality and independence?

14. Who were the Hartford Wits? What noble motive bound them together? What are the chief works of each? How do you account for the fact that their minor poems (Dwight's hymns and Barlow's "Hasty Pudding" for instance) are remembered, while their ambitious works are forgotten? What is the general character of M'Fingal ? Account, on historical grounds, for its great popularity.

15. Why is Brown called our first professional man of letters? In what other respects is he notable? Give three characteristics of his romances, and show how they reappear constantly in later American fiction. What general literary tendencies of this age are reflected in his works? How do his romances compare with contemporary English and German romances? In what way does he show an advance in novel writing?