"My stories were not written for farmers' wives," I replied. "They were written to convict the selfish monopolistic liars of the towns."
"I hope the liars read 'em," was her laconic retort.
Nevertheless, in spite of all the outcry against my book, words of encouragement came in from a few men and women who had lived out the precise experiences which I had put into print. "You have delineated my life," one man said. "Every detail of your description is true. The sound of the prairie chickens, the hum of the threshing machine, the work of seeding, corn husking, everything is familiar to me and new in literature."
A woman wrote, "You are entirely right about the loneliness, the stagnation, the hardship. We are sick of lies. Give the world the truth."
Another critic writing from the heart of a great university said, "I value your stories highly as literature, but I suspect that in the social war which is coming you and I will be at each other's throats."
This controversy naturally carried me farther and farther from the traditional, the respectable. As a rebel in art I was prone to arouse hate. Every letter I wrote was a challenge, and one of my conservative friends frankly urged the folly of my course. "It is a mistake for you to be associated with cranks like Henry George and writers like Whitman," he said. "It is a mistake to be published by the Arena. Your book should have been brought out by one of the old established firms. If you will fling away your radical notions and consent to amuse the governing classes, you will succeed."
Fling away my convictions! It were as easy to do that as to cast out my bones. I was not wearing my indignation as a cloak. My rebellious tendencies came from something deep down. They formed an element in my blood. My patriotism resented the failure of our government. Therefore such advice had very little influence upon me. The criticism that really touched and influenced me was that which said, "Don't preach,—exemplify. Don't let your stories degenerate into tracts." Howells said, "Be fine, be fine—but not too fine!" and Gilder warned me not to leave Beauty out of the picture.
In the light of this friendly council I perceived my danger, and set about to avoid the fault of mixing my fiction with my polemics.
The editor of the Arena remained my most loyal supporter. He filled the editorial section of his magazine with praise of my fiction and loudly proclaimed my non-conformist character. No editor ever worked harder to give his author a national reputation and the book sold, not as books sell now, but moderately, steadily, and being more widely read than sold, went far. This proved of course, that my readers were poor and could not afford to pay a dollar for a book, at least they didn't, and I got very little royalty from the sale. If I had any illusions about that they were soon dispelled. On the paper bound book I got five cents, on the cloth bound, ten. The sale was mainly in the fifty-cent edition.
It was not for me to criticise the methods by which my publisher was trying to make me known, and I do not at this moment regret Flower's insistence upon the reforming side of me,—but for the reason that he was essentially ethical rather than esthetic, some part of the literary significance of my work escaped him. It was from the praise of Howells, Matthews and Stedman, that I received my enlightenment. I began to perceive that in order to make my work carry its message, I must be careful to keep a certain balance between Significance and Beauty. The artist began to check the preacher.