SOLITAIRE
Starting Point. “You ask about the origin of ‘Solitaire,’ which chances to be rather easier to trace than the origin of most of the stories I have written, since I more often begin with an abstract ‘idea’ and work outward to character and plot. When a story begins otherwise I have discovered (and all such things are matters of discovery after the fact, and never of premeditation) that it is almost invariably the result of some purely visual impression of a single person, detached from any incident or complication. A stranger, seen once, who recurs again and again to my mind, and about whom my curiosity increases, I have learned to rely upon, in a kind of occult unstatable way, to bring home his own plot.
“The opening scene of ‘Solitaire’ is an exact transcript of one of those visual impressions. I did see the man who afterward became ‘Corey’ in the restaurant of a small Paris hotel. My vis-à-vis did say, ‘Look at the American!’ and I did turn to meet the twinkle I have described in the story. The curious thing is that I cannot now remember whether he wore a decorative ribbon or not. My impression is that he did not, for it was not until several weeks later that the idea of decorations as a ‘motive’ occurred to me. What mattered, what really roused my curiosity, was my surprise at seeing him there, when I knew nothing at all about the man,—my immediate sense of his playing a strange rôle, of his being away from home. He was a physician, he had been working in the Balkans, and he was going back again the next day. Also he had been in Russia. These things he told me after dinner in the salon, when we talked together; and he was from the Middle West, and called it ‘God’s country’ and said he wanted to get back. I did not see him after that night, but he kept coming into my mind, and each time I would wonder how he had ever come into my mind, and each time I would wonder how he had ever come to leave his home in the Middle West, and in the end it became, I suppose, a kind of subconscious abstract problem. At any rate the solution appeared one day—and all I had then to do was to write the story. So, after all, it was a story of ‘idea’ worked out to plot,—but a visual impression put the idea into my head. One thing only, I believe, I knew all the time,—that whatever his motive was, he was as much in the dark about it as I. That, perhaps, was what attracted me, what kept my curiosity alive, and what, in the end, made it an acceptable story.”—Fleta Campbell Springer.
Plot. Unsheathed from the tissue of its presentation, the essential plot of this character story is as follows:
Initial Impulse: Dr. Jim Corey, of Dubuque, Iowa, happening to be in China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion wins, by his medical skill, the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, and the French ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
Steps toward the Dramatic Climax: Corey returns to his home, simple and unaffected. Afterward, though always off to one of the far corners of the earth, he comes back with the same indifference to his decorations. Once or twice only he displays them, in a spirit of comic masquerade or to please his friends. In 1912 he takes part in the Balkan campaign, and happens to meet in Paris, where he goes for anaesthetics, the narrator of the present story. (Not the author, it will be noticed.) On his return to Dubuque in the spring of 1913 he marries. Essentially a home man and now settled down, he seemingly feels no inclination at the outbreak of the World War to get to France. In August, 1915, however, he goes to Philadelphia, where he supposedly remains for two months, conducting experiments. In reality, he sails for France, goes to the front, and in six weeks wins the Croix de Guerre. He returns home, as if from Philadelphia.
Dramatic Climax: After some weeks his wife finding the Croix de Guerre and learning the truth, accuses him of being unable to resist a new decoration. Corey’s faith in himself and the honesty of his past is destroyed.
Steps toward Climax of Action: Corey, in distress, makes a confessor of his relative, Mr. Ewing. He seems convinced that he is “rotten” and has been, without knowing it. Shortly, he leaves again, and it is given out that he has gone to France to help in the war. At the front he exposes himself to every danger; meantime, on duty and off he wears his array of decorations. It is noteworthy that nobody sees anything “funny” in them, however. Volunteering to rescue a wounded officer, he is mortally injured, and the two are brought to the relief station together.
Climax of Action Scene: The officer, while Corey is unconscious, tells how Corey shielded him at the expense of his own life. He manages to despatch a note to General Headquarters. Corey regains consciousness and calls for his friend Burke, to whom he dictates Mr. Ewing’s name and address. Burke, hearing that the Medaille Militaire is to be conferred upon Corey, tells him. Corey hearing that three hours will be required remarks, “That’s time enough.” He desires Mr. Ewing to know that “It breaks a man’s luck to know what he wants,” and that he did not take the hypodermic which would have kept him alive until the conferring of the Medaille Militaire. He wishes his wife to hear nothing about the honor he might have had at the last.
Dénouement: The Division General arrives too late to confer the medal. Corey had saved his wife this added disgrace.
Presentation. The facts of the plot, extending over a long time, are unified through the device of the narrator who, first becoming curious about Corey and enlisting the reader’s curiosity, learns them from Mr. Ewing. Ewing, then, becomes an inner narrator, and his story, in turn, encloses that of Burke. The skill of the author is manifest in the process by which she has so interwoven the various pieces of information about Corey as to make a smooth and perfectly joined story. The element of Chance plays a strong part, but so natural a rôle that it meets with no lack of credulity. That is, Chance caused the first meeting, but since in that contretemps lies the base of the story, it is accepted. Chance also causes the meeting between the narrator and the only man, perhaps, who could have given the facts about Corey’s career. But it is naturally brought about, through the setting and the preliminaries antecedent to the recognition that here was some one who knew Corey.
Do you anywhere feel that the narrator is a woman? Is the narrator’s delicacy in the smoking car, for example, greater than a man would have felt? Would a man apologize for hearing the story.
Character. The story exemplifies to an unusual degree the unity which results from emphasizing one character. Every other is ancillary to Corey. Even his wife is but a human means for bringing home to his own consciousness the question as to his motives. The others exist mainly as links between the reader and Corey. The interest in the physician, for the reader, lies in speculating over his acts, his whereabouts, and the opposing forces of his nature. In the end, it is seen that he has been all along a single-hearted American, one who followed his nature, but who, when his attention was drawn to the sort of nature it appeared to be, determined upon a course of punishment. The title of the story strengthens this interpretation. The summary episode of the Western miner strengthens it: if the miner cheated at solitaire he shot himself. Corey felt that he had cheated unaware and set himself to the task of flagellation.
Setting. The contrast between the Middle West and France emphasizes the apparent contradictory qualities in Corey’s nature. The shift in settings is in itself conducive to unity and short-story effect only through contrast; but the rehearsed method of telling the story, with the accent on Corey, properly subordinates the divergence in locality and swings it into harmony.
Fleta Campbell Springer thinks a short-story is whatever the author makes it. “That is why I believe in it, in its possibilities. The very fact that you can’t put your finger on it, can’t ticket it, or define it, is its fascination. Its limits are the limits of the author’s ability, and there are several kinds of authors in the world. The word ‘short-story’ is sufficient definition in itself, length being the only quality to come under restriction.”