The Forerunner Part 22

Books like this are pathetic in their little efforts to check social progress.

We suspect the author's name to be Mr. Partington.

(The Life and Times of Anne Royall. By Sarah Harvey Porter, M.A. 12mo.

Cloth, 209 pp. $1.50 net; postage 12 cents.)

Biography has never been a favorite study with me; but I was interested in this book because the woman whose life it described seemed worth while. Reading it, I found not only the life of Anne Royall, but the life of America in the early part of the nineteenth century, in our young, crude, dangerous days of national formation. A novel has been defined as "a corner of life seen through a temperament." If that is a true definition, then this is a novel, for Anne Royall had "temperament"

if ever anyone had, and she saw a large corner of life through it.

Who was Anne Royall? An American woman, pioneer born and bred, familiar with the life-and-death struggle of the frontier, and full of the spirit of '76. She was born in 1769, and lived through the War of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and almost up to the Civil War, dying in 1854. In 1797 she was married to Captain William Royall, an exceptional man, a Virginian, cultivated, liberal, singularly broad-minded and public-spirited, and life with him added years of genuine culture to the energy of a naturally bright mind. Left a widow at the age of forty-four, and, after ten years of travel and experience, defrauded of the property left to her by her husband, she began to live a brave self-supporting independent life at an age when most of the women of her years were white-capped grandmothers.

Instead of sinking into the position of a dependent female relative, she insisted on earning her own living. This she did as so many women do to-day, by the use of her pen, a rarer profession in those times. The more remarkable thing is that in the face of overwhelming odds she stood for a religion, at a period when old-fas.h.i.+oned Calvinism was still a dominant power. The most remarkable, is her absolute devotion to the public interests, to social service as she saw it.

There were a good many women writers even at that time, some of high merit, but there were few publicists among them. Some espoused this or that "Cause" and gave to it the pa.s.sionate devotion so natural to a woman's heart. But Anne Royall, while she also was pa.s.sionately devoted to several well-defined "Causes," was unique in that she kept in view the general situation of her country, political, economic, geographic, and educational, and wrote steadily for thirty-one years on matters of national importance.

It is not a question of whether she was right or wrong--though she was mostly right, as history has proved; but the impressive thing is that this old woman, with "troubles of her own," was overwhelmingly interested in her country and its service. There are not so many, either men or women, of this mind, that we can afford to overlook this st.u.r.dy pioneer "new woman." She had virtues, too, good solid Christian virtues of the rarer sort; she visited the sick and afflicted, gave to him that asked, and from him that would borrow turned not away. Even to her own weaker sisters she was a strength and comfort, greatly injuring her own position by this unusual charity. Also she was brave, honest, truthful, persevering, industrious--"manly" virtues these.

But--and here we have the reason why Anne Royall made no greater mark, why she was "unsuccessful," why most of us never heard of her--she attacked great powers, and she fought unwisely. Her abusive writing sounds abominably to-day, but must be judged, of course, by the standard of her time. The worst things she said were not as bad as things Sh.e.l.ley said--as the bitter invective and scurrilous attacks common to pamphleteers of the time. If our newspapers are yellow, theirs were orange in the matter of personalities.

But even then this woman had a keen-cutting weapon, and used it unsparingly. Being alone, with no male relative to defend her; being poor, and so further defenceless; being old, thus lacking weak woman's usual protection of beauty, she had absolutely nothing to fall back on when her enemies retaliated.

This picture of one lone woman defying and blackguarding what was almost an established church, is much like Jack the Giantkiller--with a different result. It was deemed necessary to crush this wasp that stung so sharply; and in 1829, in the capitol city of the United States of America, a court of men tried--and convicted--this solitary woman of sixty as a Common Scold. They raked up obsolete laws, studied and strove to wrest their meanings to apply to this case, got together some justification, or what seemed to them justification for their deeds, and succeeded in irretrievably damaging her reputation.

She was not to be extinguished, however. In 1831 she started a newspaper, with the ill-chosen name of PAUL PRY. In 1836 another took its place, called THE HUNTRESS. And on the sale of these newspapers and her books, the indomitable old lady lived to fight and fought to live till she was eighty-five.

She is well worth reading about. The history of her times rises and lives around her. In her vivid description we see the new rugged country, over which she travelled from end to end; in her accounts of current literature we pick up stray bits of information as to new authors and new words. "Playfulness," for instance, is one which she stigmatizes as "silly in sound and significance," and declares that she does not read the new novels "with the exception of Walter Scott's."

More interesting still to most of us is to study over the long lists of her pen-portraits and see our ancestors as the others saw them. Few Americans of three generations but can find some grandfather or great uncle halo-ed or pilloried by this clear-eyed observer.

Miss Porter has done her work well. It is clear, strong and entertaining--this biography. If the writer seems more enthusiastic about Anne Royall than the reader becomes, that is clearly due to an unusual perception of life-values; a recognition of the n.o.ble devotion and high courage of her subject, and an intense sympathy with such characteristics.

The discussion as to whether we should or should not teach children the Santa Claus myth pops up anew with Christmas time; and puzzles anew anyone who regards this festival from a religious viewpoint.

If it was a choice between Santa Claus and nothing, we might prefer Santa Claus; but here we have before us three things: first, the basis of fact, the world old festival of the turn of the year, the coming of the sun; second, a history of rejoicing peoples throughout all the ages, keeping up the celebration under changing G.o.ds and dogmas; and third, the story of beauty and wonder about the birth of Jesus.

Any child could be taught the meaning of the Coming of the Sun. The growing light, the longer days, the beautiful future of flowers and birds and playing in the gra.s.s; the joy of the young year. If we want legends and stories, every religion behind us is full of them; stories of sun-G.o.ds and their splendid triumph; stories of the great earth mother and her bounty; stories of elves and gnomes and druids and all manner of fairy tales.

But why avoid our own religion--the first which has emphatically taught Love as the Law of Life--peace on earth and good-will to men. Are we ashamed of our religion or don't we believe it any more? If we do accept it in all the long-told tales of miracle and wonder, then we have stories enough to tell our children; stories of simple human beauty, stories of heavenly glory, stories of mystery and magic and delight.

If we do not wish to tell them these things as literally true; or even as beautiful legends, there remains enough historic foundation to begin with; and enough of the enduring glory of human love to last us a lifetime.

"What is Christmas, Mama?"

"Christmas is a festival as old as the world, dear child--as old as our human world; historic people have feasted and danced and sung for thousands upon thousands of years, at this time of the year; and offered gifts."

"Why do they give things at Christmas, Mama?"

"Because they are happy, dear; because they feel rich and glad and loving now that the sun is coming back. As if Mama had been away--and you could just see her--a long, long way off. You had seen her go--and go--and go--farther and farther; and then she stopped a while--with her back to you--and then all of a sudden she turned round and came toward you! Wouldn't you be glad?"

Then if the child wants to know about the tree and the candles and all the details of ceremony, there are facts and fancies to account for them all.

But if he says, "Why do they call it Christmas, Mama?"--then you must tell him the secret of Christianity--which is love.

Now, can anyone explain--or defend, in face of all this, our preference for a shallow local myth about St. Nicholas, and the corruption of that into a mere comic supplement character; a bulbous benevolent goblin, red-nosed and gross, doing impossible tricks with reindeers and chimneys, and half the time degraded to a mere adjunct of nursery government? Why do we think it beautiful? Or interesting? Or beneficial? The children like it, we say.

Children like what they are used to, generally. Also, like older people, they are p.r.o.ne to like what isn't good for them. They like brandy-drops among sweetmeats, but that is no reason we should supply them.

This brings us to a strange characteristic of most of us; we seem to prefer small cheap shallow outside things to the deep glowing beauty of life. We seem afraid to take life at its splendid best; choosing rather to live in a litter of petty ideas and feelings, and save the big ones for Sundays--or annual holidays.

Yet in our hearts we all love great sweeps of emotion; and children especially. Prof. Thomas, of Chicago, has given us a sidelight on this in his clever book about women, "s.e.x and Society." He shows how in our long pre-social period we were accustomed to strong excitement, long hours of quivering suspense, mad rushes of blind fear, and orgies of wild triumph. Our nerve channels were like the beds of mountain streams, in dry warm lands; lying shallow or even empty at times; and again roaring torrents. So that nowadays, on the paved levels of our civilized life, the well-graduated dribble of small steady feelings, the organism itself cries out for a change in the pressure.

Children and young people feel this more than older ones; the very old, indeed, resent an unusual emotion. Yet when the young grow restless and fretfully "wish something would happen!" we rebuke them; from the heights of our enforced contentment; and call this natural and healthy feeling a mere "thirst for excitement."

We need excitement. We have a vast capacity for it. It is a most useful thing--this excitement; and we ought to have more of it, much more. These young people are perfectly right in their uneasy feeling that it would be nice to have something happen!

With all this to bank on, why so overlook the splendid possibilities of Christmas? Why continue to make our helpless children's minds the submissive channels for poor worn-out thin old stories? Are there no gorgeous glowing truths in life--real life--now?

Then we tired aged people--born and reared in this atmosphere of cold weariness; shake our heads and say--

"No. Life is hard. Life is dreary. Life is one long grind!"

That is where we are wrong, and the children are right. They come in new every time. The earth is as young to them as it was to Adam.

If we would but once face the dignity and beauty of childhood instead of looking down on it as we do--then we could take advantage of that constant influx of force, instead of doing our best to crush it down.

This brings us sharply back to our Christmas--the festival of the Child.

It is. If celebrates the real new year; the new-born year, the opening of another season of Life.

Dimly, very dimly, we have glimpsed this now and then, in the old triune G.o.dhead of Isis, Osiris and Horus; and in our modern wors.h.i.+p of the Madonna and Child.

The time is coming very near when we shall see the meaning of The Child more fully; and make our wors.h.i.+p wiser.

What we see in all our thousand homes is "my child." What the doll-taught mother sees is a sweet pretty dressable object; far more time and effort being given--even before its birth--to the making of clothing, than to the making of its const.i.tution or character.

Then we see children as "a care," and a care they are to our worldwide incompetence. How pathetic is the inadequacy of the young mother! She would never dare to undertake to run a racing stable with no more knowledge and experience than she brings to run a family.

She loves them--?