“I went over and stood by the window; a little dry snow was blowing—it was the first week in November—beginning to collect on the edges of the walks and along the fences; the landscape showed sketched in white on a background of neutral gray. I heard a movement in the room behind me; my mother came presently and stood looking out with me. She was very pale, scared but commiserating. Somehow my question had glanced in striking the dying nerve of long since encountered dreads and pains. We faced them together there in the cold twilight.”
“‘I’m sorry, daughter’—she hesitated—‘I can’t help you. I don’t know.... I never knew myself.’”
We follow the girl through marriage, the birth of a son and his death in infancy, the almost accidental disclosure of her gift for the stage, her struggle with her husband, the gradual breach between them and his defection involving the village dressmaker, the long and harrowing period in Chicago after his death when Olivia was without work, without money and often without hope. Success came, of course; it takes death itself to extinguish genius such as she possessed, “of which I was for the moment the vase, the cup.” The finest thing in this remarkable story is the portrayal of that last struggle between Olivia and Helmeth Garrett in which the woman’s gift (or possession) bests even love. But the chapters on Olivia’s childhood are wonderfully penetrating glimpses into the mind of a young girl and the depiction of other characters is of a high order; one of the best being the sketch of Olivia’s brother, Forester, “Forrie,” who made a vocation, a life work, of the business of being a dutiful son. A Woman of Genius is the work of a woman of genius.
“Whatever you are minded to say of my work say this—that I ... have not yet come to my full power.” You knew, Mrs. Austin. And now we all know.
Books by Mary Austin
Love and the Soul-Maker, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
The Green Bough. Doubleday, Page & Company, New York.
The Land of the Sun, Houghton Mifflin.
The Land of Little Rain, 1903. Houghton Mifflin.
The Basket Woman, 1904. Houghton Mifflin.
Isidro, 1905. Houghton Mifflin.
The Flock, 1906. Houghton Mifflin.
Santa Lucia, 1908. Harper & Brothers, New York.
Lost Borders, 1909. Houghton Mifflin.
The Arrow Maker, 1911. Doubleday, Page.
Christ in Italy, 1911. Doubleday, Page.
A Woman of Genius, 1912. Doubleday, Page.
The Lovely Lady, 1913. Doubleday, Page.
The Man Jesus, 1915. Houghton Mifflin.
The Ford, 1917. Houghton Mifflin.
The Young Woman Citizen, 1918. The Woman’s Press, New York.
The Trail Book, 1918. Houghton Mifflin.
26 Jayne Street, 1920. Houghton Mifflin.
CHAPTER XIV
MARY S. WATTS
“2722 Cleinview Avenue, East Walnut Hills,
“Cincinnati, Ohio, June 19, 1918.
“My dear Mr. Overton:
“I HAVE here a letter from Mr. Latham of Macmillans with a very complimentary request from you for data regarding myself. There really is not much to say about me as a person. The trade of writing has been pursued—in times past, at least—by so many picturesque people in so picturesque a fashion that the rest of the world has got into the habit of thinking an author must of necessity be picturesque; but such is not my case, rather to my regret whenever anybody displays this kind and gratifying curiosity about me. One would dearly love to be a slap-dash, swashbuckling sort of person like Borrow, say; or a sick, fiery, indomitable R. L. S. Then there would be something to write about. As it is, I am only an inconspicuous gentlewoman—I hope a gentlewoman anyway!—with a more or less Victorian style of writing which has frequently proved a profound puzzle to critics of a younger generation.