We have said that the success of "Rudder Grange" induced Stockton to abandon everything but literature. He worked first for the Philadelphia Morning Post; later he joined Edward Eggleston on Hearth and Home; by and by he cast his lot with Scribner's Monthly, and finally he settled down on the editorial staff of St. Nicholas. In this position he remained until, in 1880, he gave up editorial work altogether. Thereafter he devoted himself entirely to fiction.
Even more sensational than the luck of "Rudder Grange" was the luck of "The Lady or the Tiger?" The story had a phenomenal sale--for those days--in this country, and it has been translated into a few foreign languages. "Perhaps the most interesting thing about 'The Lady or the Tiger?'" says the humorist, "is its great popularity among the savage races. It has been told again and again by the story-tellers of Burmah. A missionary once told the story to a tribe of Karens up in the north of Burmah. When she came back a year later the tribe surrounded her and wanted to know if she had found out whether--
"I cannot answer the question, for I have no earthly idea myself. I really have never been able to decide whether the Lady or the Tiger came out of that door. Yet I must defend myself. People for years have upbraided me for leaving it a mystery; some used to write me that I had no right to impose upon the good nature of the public in that manner. However, when I started in to write the story, I really intended to finish it. But it would never let itself be finished. I could not decide. And to this day, I have, I assure you, no more idea than anyone else."
It used to be said that Mr. Stockton was a short-story writer and nothing more, as if that were not the most difficult branch of fiction; but he silenced these reckless critics with "The Late Mrs. Null," which, in the beginning, had the biggest circulation of all his books. Since then book has followed book, regularly but not hurriedly. The author of "Rudder Grange" does not follow the plan of Trollope; he does not work so many hours a day, mood or no mood. Sometimes up to luncheon time not a word has been put on paper.
He never writes; he dictates. In his early days he dictated to his wife, but in recent years he has employed a stenographer. At any appointed hour in the morning the young woman trips downstairs from the room at the top of the house to which she and her noisy typewriter have been banished, and if the author have his subject well in mind he delivers one thousand five hundred words before the morning is over. From this first draft the secretary makes the draft for the printer, which seldom is revised. The fact is, Stockton shapes his delightful stories in his mind as effectively as most other authors shape theirs on paper; and, therefore, when a story has been dictated, he is done with it. Mrs. Stockton, of whom we spoke as his first amanuensis, was Miss Marian E. Tuttle of Amelia County, Virginia, visits to whose home gave the novelist the impressions of negro life which he has described so felicitously. At present the Stocktons live near Charlestown, West Virginia. The estate, named Claymont, comprises one hundred and fifty acres of a wide-spreading piece of land once owned by Washington. The house is said to have been planned by the first President himself. At any rate, it was built by the immortal patriot's grandnephew, and it takes its name from the Washington homestead in England. Very appropriately the edition of Mr. Stockton's works has been given the title of Shenandoah.
Personally the fanciful story-teller is small, spare, and shy. His is an elusive personality. "A personality more winsome and delightful," says one of his friends, "it would be difficult to find. It is a small man that sits before you, a keen-eyed man, whose eyes you know miss nothing, a man whose mustache is iron-gray and whose hair is almost white. His photographs give no hint of the man; they do not even mirror his personal appearance. Nothing save a talk with him gives you that." Another friend has said: "The big dark eyes, full of patient, weary expression, are luminous; the mouth close and discouraged, expands into smiling curves, sweet and sympathetic; the whole soul is in the face, and from head to foot, Frank Stockton is the genial responsive man. It is like a brilliant burst of sunshine following a cloud, suddenly and unexpectedly, and therefore more delicious in surprise and beauty."
Everyone under this charmer's spell will, we are sure, say with Edmund Clarence Stedman:
I have stayed at the Rudder Grange
Just after the wedding chime,
Though that jolliest lodge--how strange!--
Is of age at this very time;
I have roamed in the Squirrel Inn
(With my vouchers from Germantown);
To the House of Martha I've been,
And more than once have gone down
In the queerest of all queer wrecks,
And have argued and taken my tea
With Mesdames Aleshine and Lecks,
All up to our necks in the sea;
I have solved, with my private elf,
That Lady-and-Tiger riddle
That routed the Sphinx herself
And parted the world in the middle;
And all this fellowship jolly,
With a wizard that led me around
Through wonder and sweetest folly,
From first to last I have found
His fancy more passing rare
Than that of mask or mummer
Since Puck and Oberon wove the snare
In a night's dream of midsummer;
So I'll roam with him and his throng,
Wherever the course meander,
Though he frolic a century long.
And outlive by a year the sage vizier
Of the Two-Horned Alexander.