Arts and Letters

I am going to violate two accepted rules of composition: first, that comparisons are odious, and, second, that one should reserve his climax until the last; and these precepts shall both be violated by one sentence, to express my conviction that, with the possible exception of Hawthorne and Poe, Cable is the greatest figure in American fiction. Hawthorne and Irving had more continuous suavity of literary method; Poe a more arresting fancy; Mark Twain subtended a larger arc; Henry James vibrated a more purely intellectual gamut; Bret Harte was more uniformly, though often artificially, picturesque: but Cable seems to me to share all these qualities in a combination not found in any one of the others. I base this judgment only on a recent study of Old Creole Days and The Grandissimes, but, the altitude of mountains being reckoned from the top, I have no hesitation in saying that, in my opinion, in George Washington Cable a great writer has walked among us whose greatness our generation has not recognized.

Style, of course, is the essence of the writer, and, in Cable, this quality is composed of many qualities: grace, force, range, suggestiveness, imagination, large and unconventional vocabulary, shimmering humor, easy movement, contrast, tenderness, surprise, and dramatic progression to an adequate climax. Thus his style has intense personality. I cannot find for it any provenance: it seems to derive from no master of literature.

When we turn to the substance of Cable's writing it is not less notable. Here was a man of Puritan instincts who could interpret the Cavalier as no other author has ever done. He portrayed women as understandingly and as sympathetically as Tolstoy. He knew the Creoles by heart, and gives us all the sparkling facets of their attractive character. Raoul Innerarity deserves a place beside Tartarin of Tarascon and is of finer fibre. In English fiction, even in Thackeray, there are no more charming women than Aurore and Clotilde Nancanou. Palmyre, the voodoo witch, is a masterly creation. The grimness in Belles Demoiselles Plantation and Jean-ah Poquelin make The Fall of the House of Usher seem fantastic. The historic background of The Grandissimes is touched in so lightly that it never seems to rush to the footlights. Processions and crowds and Creole halls are painted with the bold, unfumbling stroke of genius. Nothing human is foreign to Cable, and he dramatises inanimate things, such as the Mississippi River, the jungle of swamps and the oldtime mansions, saying of one that it had "an immense veranda about its sides and a flight of steps in front spreading broadly downward as we open arms to a child." He is never commonplace but always keeps the reader on the qui vive by the piquancy of his narrative, the natural drift of which carries along his touches of color as lightly as leaves are carried on an autumn brook. Marcel Proust has said that "the writer who does not naturally think in images is far better without them." Here lies part of Cable's strength: instinctively he thinks in images, apposite and precise, and, therefore, is free from artificiality.

When I said that Cable is the greatest writer in American fiction, I forgot part of my climax. I believe the final verdict of criticism will be that The Grandissimes is not only the greatest American novel to date but that it stands in the front rank of the fiction of the world. It is amazing in the bigness of its plot, its grasp of human nature, the charm of its execution, the suffusion of atmosphere, its firm dramatic construction, and the sculpturesque roundness of its figures. Who in our national literature has equalled the tragedy of the death of the giant slave, the savage prince of his own country, the dreaded Bras-Coupé, who in his last moments, for the reverence he feels for its mother, holds the white babe tenderly in the hollow of his arm, and who when asked if he knows whither he is going gives assent and says with his last breath "To—Africa"!

Cable's gentleness, lovableness, and integrity as a man have made us take his talent for granted. His associates of the Academy owe it to his memory to

Reweigh the jewel and retaste the wine.

We shall then discover that he had not merely talent but genius.