She has the large-minded sympathy that makes for understanding of the under dog. She will take French lessons, not only because she wants to study the language, but because a cultivated Frenchman needs money and will not accept charity.
Edna Ferber enjoys a talk with a washwoman and the woman enjoys the talk too. Her colored maid adores her—and imposes on her (as is the way with colored maids).
She hates pretension and is very likely to speak her mind not only to her intimates but straight to the face of the objectionable person. Sometimes she speaks more strongly than she should, for she is impulsive and quick-tempered, but no one is more generous than she in the acknowledgment of mistakes.
Her letters are characteristic. They just begin. No salutation, no sparring for an opening—they begin at the beginning and when she is through she stops. She just adds her initials.
She stands on her own small feet. If you say to her, “The mantle of O. Henry has fallen on your shoulders” (it has been said with complimentary intent), you will get a flash from her black eyes that will scorch you and a rush of words that will make you wish you were elsewhere. She does not want anyone’s else mantle or footgear for that matter—she is herself, Edna Ferber.
Her earlier picturesque, sometimes flippant style, the surprise climaxes, and the short pithy sentences, come from her newspaper experience and not from any influence of O. Henry. The newspaper editor’s command is to “tell the story and make it snappy,” and it has affected Edna Ferber’s style, as it has affected the work of many other writers who grew out of newspaper offices.
Her style has changed as all thoughtful readers must have noticed. The literary form of the Emma McChesney stories is quite different from that of the stories in “Cheerful by Request” and “Gigolo.” Read a story in “Roast Beef Medium” and then read “Old Man Minick.”
There is a depth and richness, a dignity and soundness, that the earlier works lacked. Yet there is no loss of strength and vital freshness in her later books.
There is a vitality about Edna Ferber that is recognizable the moment she comes into a room. She enters almost with a rush, with a quick, firm step; though she is short, scarcely more than five feet three, I should think, she dominates most groups. Her rather large head with its thick black hair, cropped so one may see the admirable shape of the skull, is held erect. She greets one with a cordiality that is sometimes disarming and she speaks with a curious drawl that seems quite out of character with her forthright nature. What she says is worth listening to, for even the most commonplace occasions bring forth unbromidic speech from Edna Ferber.
As she talks in private conversation so she talks in public. She is a good speech-maker, a good lecturer. Her spoken words have the pungent vitality of her writing and the reading of her own stories makes the characters come alive startlingly.