He died a few weeks later.
VIII
The value of Russell's work depends not so much upon the poetic quality of it as upon the faithfulness and the skill with which he has portrayed the negro. Within this narrow field he has had no superior. Harris has summed it up thus:
The most wonderful thing about the dialect poetry of Irwin Russell is his accurate conception of the negro character. The dialect is not always the best—it is often carelessly written—but the negro is there, the old-fashioned, unadulterated negro, who is still dear to the Southern heart. There is no straining after effect—indeed the poems produce their result by indirection; but I do not know where could be found to-day a happier or a more perfect representation of negro character.[132]
Russell is less romantic in his picture of the negro than are Page and Harris. Once in a while he throws the mellow light over the old days, as in "Mahsr John," where he represents the freed slave dwelling in imagination upon the glories that he has once known, but he holds the strain not long:
I only has to shet my eyes, an' den it seems to me
I sees him right afore me now, jes' like he use' to be,
A-settin' on de gal'ry, lookin' awful big an' wise,
Wid little niggers fannin' him to keep away de flies.
He alluz wore de berry bes' ob planters' linen suits,
An' kep' a nigger busy jes' a-blackin' ob his boots;
De buckles on his galluses wuz made of solid gol',
An' diamon's!—dey wuz in his shut as thick as it would hol'.
Page would have stopped after the old negro had ended his glorification of the old days, but Russell hastens to bring the picture to present-day conditions:
Well, times is changed. De war it come an' sot de niggers free,
An' now ol' Mahsr John ain't hardly wuf as much as me;
He had to pay his debts, an' so his lan' is mos'ly gone—
An' I declar' I's sorry fur my pore ol' Mahsr John.