Booth Tarkington
ONE
Towards the close of the last century Booth Tarkington wrote “The Gentleman from Indiana.” It is as the Gentleman from Indiana that Mr. Tarkington has been widely known ever since. There was a time, some fifteen or twenty years ago, when every native Hoosier was supposed to have the manuscript of a “Best-Selling” novel concealed somewhere about his person. Some of the authors died, and some of them went into other occupations, and the state has managed to live the belief down. But Mr. Tarkington remains the most conspicuous living figure linking Indiana with letters.
Born in Indianapolis on July 29, 1869, he studied at Phillips-Exeter, and later at Princeton. In both places he was recognized as one likely to go far. Princeton he entered as a junior, but “made” the editorial boards of both college publications, the Tiger and the Lit—his sketches for the former being rather better than his literary contributions to the latter. He wrote the play for the Triangle Club, and, at graduation, was voted the most popular and promising man in the Class of 1893. There followed, however, lean years, when the prophecies seemed unlikely of fulfillment. That was a period, when, like the John Harkless of his own story (“The Gentleman from Indiana”), he was figuratively “sitting on a rail fence in Indiana.” Always a hard worker, he toiled unremittingly at invention and rewriting, only to have the manuscripts that he submitted with bright hopes come back to him with disheartening regularity. That was the story of the five or six years after 1893. His first tale to be sold was “Cherry,” a whimsical romance of the country about Princeton and undergraduate life at the College of New Jersey in pre-Revolutionary days. Accepted by Harper’s, it was not published until long after. Then, suddenly, success came. Almost simultaneously “The Gentleman from Indiana” and “Monsieur Beaucaire” appeared, the first a full-length novel of mid-western life, the second a charming little romance of eighteenth-century manners at Bath when Beau Nash reigned and a Prince of the Blood came over from France in the guise of a barber in the French Minister’s train. The recognition won with those two books has widened with the years. After the “Gentleman” and “Beaucaire” came “The Two Van Revels,” the germ of which had been a short tale of two thousand words written in the author’s undergraduate days. As a result of a brief fling at political life Mr. Tarkington wrote the stories collected under the title “In the Arena.” That was followed by “The Conquest of Canaan,” the story of a discredited boy who leaves his native town under a shadow, and returns to win its reluctant admiration. The years spent about that time in Europe suggested “The Guest of Quesnay,” and two shorter stories with scenes laid in Italy, “The Beautiful Lady,” and “Mine Own People.” The chief distinction of “The Flirt,” in which the author returned to the Indiana setting of the earlier books, was the picture of the heroine’s impish brother, Hedrick Madison. “The Turmoil,” dealing with the evolution of one of the great mid-western cities, showed Mr. Tarkington in the full maturity of his power. After that book he struck a new and rich vein in his sketches delineating boy life, the stories dealing with Penrod Schofield and William Sylvanus Baxter having found a response in every corner of the land. Mr. Tarkington has also to his credit considerable achievement as a playwright. “The Man From Home,” written in collaboration with Harry Leon Wilson, was one of the most successful plays of the American stage of recent years. Other plays from his pen are “Cameo Kirby,” “Springtime,” “Mister Antonio,” “The Country Cousin,” and “Seventeen.” Calling Indianapolis his home town, Mr. Tarkington spends much of his time at Kennebunkport, Maine, and usually passes a month or two every year in Princeton, New Jersey.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER A. JULEY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Robert W. Chambers
TWO
What impresses one most about Mr. Robert W. Chambers is his amazing versatility. In addition to being a popular novelist, he is an expert on rare rugs; an artist, and so well qualified a judge of fine art that he can talk intelligently to the curators and directors of museums about the old masters on exhibition there; equipped with an understanding of Chinese and Japanese antiques so that he can detect forgeries in that art; an authority on mediæval armor; a lover of outdoors, of horses, dogs, and an ardent collector of butterflies; and, in addition, a thorough man of the world, who knows Paris and Petrograd, and many of the out-of-the-way corners of the earth. These are the qualities that come to mind readily, but the list is far from complete. The longer one knows Mr. Chambers, the more varied the knowledge he finds in him.