Even Mr. Boynton allows that Perch of the Devil contains some of Mrs. Atherton’s finest work and is “a considerable book in its way.” The character of Ida Compton is one which has excited and still excites so much interest that it is worth while to quote Mrs. Atherton’s own explanation of how she came to go to Butte, Montana, and evolve her. She had been struck, as who has not, by the marvelous adaptability of American women in the capitals of Europe; “four or five years of wealth, study, travel, associations, and they are fitted to hold their own with any of Europe’s ancient aristocracies.”

“I met so many of these women when I lived in Europe,” explains Mrs. Atherton, “that it finally occurred to me to visit some of the Western towns and study the type at its source. The result is Ida Compton. In the various stages of her development, moreover—beginning when she was the young daughter of a Butte miner and laundress—I found myself meeting all American women in one. The West to-day—particularly the Northwest—embodies what used to be known as merely ‘American.’ Any one of practically all the Western women of nerve, ambition, and large latent abilities, that I met in my travels through their section of the country, might develop into a leader of New York society, a Roman-American matron, or a member of Queen Mary’s court, frowning upon too smart society. With their puritanical inheritance they might even develop into good Bostonians, although they ‘gravitate’ naturally to the more fluid societies. If they choose to retain their slang, they ‘put it over’ with an innocent dash that is a part of their natural refinement. They are virtuous by instinct, and atmospherically broadminded; full of easy good nature, but quick to resent a personal liberty; they are both sophisticated and direct, honest and subtle. With all their undiluted Americanism there is no development beyond them, no rôle they cannot play. For that reason these Ida Comptons are fundamentally all American women. The crudest remind one constantly of hundreds of women one knows in the higher American civilizations. And I found studying them at the source and developing one of them from ‘the ground up,’ watching all her qualities—good and bad—grow, diminish, fuse, but never quite change, even more interesting than meeting the finished product in Europe and amusing myself speculating upon her past.”

In the long list of Mrs. Atherton’s books with which this chapter concludes it would be desirable, but it is hardly possible, to follow the example of guidebooks and star and doublestar her more important novels. It is impracticable because any such designations would have to be those of a single taste or of a coterie of tastes. Patience Sparhawk, the dramatized biography of Alexander Hamilton called The Conqueror, and possibly her recent novel of a German revolution, or the revolt of the German women under the leadership of Gisela Niebuhr, would be marked with the double star; certainly The Conqueror would. The present writer would singlestar Senator North and the novels of early California—The Doomswoman, Rezanov, The Splendid Idle Forties and The Californians. Of The Living Present we must speak to call attention to the final paper in the book’s second part, a tribute to four New York women, of whom one is Honoré Willsie, the subject of a later chapter in this book. The Living Present is not a novel. The first half is concerned with French women in war time, the fruit of Mrs. Atherton’s observations and experience in war work; the second half has the general title Feminism in Peace and War. Perch of the Devil must be doublestarred, so probably must Ancestors and Tower of Ivory. Such books as Rulers of Kings and The Travelling Thirds are least important. Mrs. Balfame, as a capital mystery story, the result doubtless of Mrs. Atherton’s attendance at a celebrated murder trial in the interests of a New York newspaper, must be single starred in any list. The Valiant Runaways, long out of print, has been republished this fall (1918). It is a story for boys, of Spanish California, with an encounter with a savage bear, a rescue from a dangerous river, capture by Indians and an escape on wild mustangs capped by a revolutionary battle! The performance may be considered a final reminder of Mrs. Atherton’s versatility. No one has ever found fault with her for not being versatile!

Books by Gertrude Atherton

A Whirl Asunder, 1895. Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York. Now out of print.
Patience Sparhawk and Her Times, 1897. Stokes.
His Fortunate Grace, 1897. John Lane Company. New York. Now out of print.
American Wives and English Husbands, 1898. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York.
The Californians, 1898. Stokes.
A Daughter of the Vine, 1899. Lane.
The Valiant Runaways, 1899. Dodd, Mead.
Senator North, 1900. Lane.
The Aristocrats, 1901. Lane.
The Conqueror, 1902. Stokes.
The Splendid Idle Forties, 1902. Stokes.
A Few of Hamilton’s Letters, 1903. Stokes.
Rulers of Kings, 1904. Harper & Brothers, New York.
The Bell in the Fog, 1905. Harper.
The Travelling Thirds, 1905. Harper.
Ancestors, 1907. Harper.
The Gorgeous Isle, 1908. Doubleday, Page & Company. Not listed in their last catalogue.
Tower of Ivory, 1910. Stokes.
Julia France and Her Times, 1912. Stokes.
Perch of the Devil, 1914. Stokes.
California—An Intimate History, 1914. Harper.
Before the Gringo Came (Combining The Doomswoman, published in 1892, and Rezanov, published in 1906), 1915. Stokes.
Mrs. Balfame, 1916. Stokes.
The Living Present, 1917. Stokes.
The White Morning, 1918. Stokes.
The Avalanche, 1919. Stokes.
The Sisters-in-Law, 1921. Stokes.
Sleeping Fires, 1922. Stokes.

CHAPTER V
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

“I AM being very frank,” exclaims Mary Roberts Rinehart. As if she ever were otherwise! “I have never had any illusions about the work I do. I am, frankly, a story-teller. Some day I may be a novelist.

“I want to write life. But life is not always clean and happy. It is sometimes mean and sordid and cheap. These are the shadows that outline the novelist’s picture. But I will never write anything which I cannot place in my boys’ hands.”

Thus Mrs. Rinehart in the American Magazine for October, 1917. It is almost all you need to know to understand her work. Almost, but not quite. Add this:

“I sometimes think, if I were advising a young woman as to a career, that I should say: ‘First pick your husband.’”