“Furthermore, what my various characters say does not necessarily reflect my own views or beliefs—I have no propaganda spirit—the story’s the thing. Time and time again have indignant readers berated me for beliefs expressed in the speeches of my characters—beliefs which were at wide variance with my own, but perfectly in keeping with the character who expressed them.
“(I seem to be wandering away from my theme, Mr. Overton, and truly, it all seems very silly and flat to me. Here are some unrelated facts which you may be able to use somehow—they sound like the answers to an Alice in Wonderland questionnaire.)
“I read heaps of biography and autobiography and fiction and poetry, and I do not read any of these because of the possible effect they may have on my work, but because I like to. I read all the magazines, too, but because it is part of my job to see what they are doing. I would rather be unhappy than uncomfortable. I am a good cook and like to do it; indeed I can make better gingerbread and better spoon-bread and better strawberry preserves than any one in the world—this is not arrogance, but a beautiful exceptional truth, as Mr. Bob Davis [Robert H. Davis, editor of Munsey’s Magazine] would say. I work very hard, all the time, and I do not like parties and teas and such and never go to them, when I can get out of it. I write whenever I have any time and I have trained myself to use any time I can get and to go on with a story without re-reading what I’ve already written, even after a lapse of several days. I am an individualist without having the least conviction that it’s the best thing to be. I do not take my own—or most other people’s—writing very seriously. I believe that there was never a time when so many people were writing and writing well, but saying nothing of interest or value. On the other hand, I believe that there is a lot of big work being done and that the mediocre stuff doesn’t really obscure it. I’d rather be an editor than a writer, but I like to be both.
“(Now, really—this is getting ‘curiouser and curiouser,’ to revert again to Alice. Will it do—or won’t it? And, if not, what have I left unsaid that I ought to have said? I am gradually working myself up, I am afraid, into a state of self-conscious muzziness. And I don’t want that to go into your book.)”
So writes Sophie Kerr (Mrs. Sophie Kerr Underwood) in response to an appeal for some information about herself that might legitimately gratify the natural curiosity of her readers. Her readers are a multitude! She has had stories in “all the magazines,” so to speak; the statement doesn’t exaggerate much. She hasn’t had a story, so far as we know, in the New Republic but when that Effort decides to take up the publication of short stories doubtless she will!
Mrs. Underwood’s short stories need no introduction (to use the sacred formula), and anyway we are here concerned with her as a novelist, and primarily with her as the author of The Blue Envelope and The Golden Block.
Both these stories are concerned with women in business and there the resemblance pretty nearly stops. The Blue Envelope has for its heroine a young girl (who tells the story) under twenty. Leslie Brennan is pretty, a pretty butterfly, used to nothing but spending money and having a joyous if innocent time. She lives with Mrs. Alexander, a woman of family and breeding and wealth. Her guardian, Uncle Bob, pays her bills. But when Mrs. Alexander is summoned to Maine by illness Leslie goes to live with the Morrisons and meets Randall Heath. Heath makes love to her and the shock when she finds out that he was only after her money makes somewhat easier compliance with the unusual wish of her dead father that she spend two years earning her living.
This adventure—earning your living is the greatest adventure in the world and Sophie Kerr can prove it to you!—this enterprise takes Leslie to New York. And there she meets Minnie Lacy who has long earned a living and knows a lot about men’s neckties, being engaged in the business of making them. And there, also, after getting a stenographer’s training and some education in the work of a secretary, Leslie enters the employ of Ewan Kennedy, inventor of explosives.
The “blue envelope” doesn’t make its appearance until along toward the end of the story. It contains the formula for a powder which he is going to give to the United States Government—sarnite. The formula must be delivered to the Chief of Ordnance in Washington. Certain persons, agents, presumably, of a foreign government, are bending heaven and earth to get the sarnite formula. They will stop at nothing. And Leslie Brennan has the task of delivering it to the Chief of Ordnance.
Does it sound like a good story? It does. And is it? It is. So good that you feel much more like telling it than analyzing it. But to “give it away” would be a very unfair piece of business. In analyzing it what shall we say? The Blue Envelope is simple, straightforward, absorbing and thoroughly enjoyable because of the perfect naturalism of narration. We don’t mean realism—abused word! We mean naturalism. And what is naturalism? Why, simply the knack, art, faculty or gift of inventing incidents, drawing characters, writing conversation, describing action in such an unaffected manner that it all seems the most natural thing in the world!