Literary Hearthstones of Dixie

by La Salle Corbell Pickett

In 1868 Augusta Evans was married to Mr. Lorenze M. Wilson, President of the Mobile & Montana Railroad, and became mistress of the beautiful home on the Spring Hill shell road near the picturesque city of Mobile. The house looked toward the road through aisles of greenery across a yard filled with flowers diffusing a perfume blended of geraniums, roses, tropical plants and the blossoms of the North. A chorus of birds filled the air with music. Majestic old live-oaks with twilight veils of gray moss were like tall and stately nuns pausing suddenly to count their beads to the music of vesper bells. Magnolia trees in dense white blossom gave the impression that winter had aroused from his summer sleep and unfolded his blanket of snow to add his most beautiful touch to the charms of the golden days. A handsome driveway led across a lawn to a veranda, vine-wreathed and hidden in a crush of flowers. The house, divided by a wide hall, opened upon broad piazzas. Leading up to it through brilliant blossoming was a white path between sentinel lines of oak trees that reached out friendly hands to clasp each other above the broad footway. Amid such beauty one felt lost in a mystic world of which he had never dreamed and revelled in a vision from which he might hope that there would be no waking.

Augusta Jane Evans was born May 4, 1835, near Columbus, Georgia. "The Queen City of the Chattahoochee" is enthroned in a pine forest amid a range of hills that form a semi-circle about the city with its fine wide streets and magnificent shade trees. The St. Elmo Institute for girls, with its great oak grove and its beautiful lake, was the model for the school in the book, "St. Elmo." Sweet memories of the beautiful home in Columbus remained in the heart of Miss Evans and she said in after years that many of the happiest days of her girlhood were spent there. In later years she had here her "White Farm," on which all the animals and fowls were white.

In her childhood the family removed to Galveston, Texas, going afterward to San Antonio. In the two years spent here she studied under the tutorship of her mother, who never gave up her charge to the care of a professional teacher, though the responsibility of seven other children might have furnished her with an excuse for doing so.

In the most enchanting city of Texas the future novelist was surrounded by the romantic myths of Indian lore. On a day long past, the miracle of the San Antonio River and its valley had burst upon the enraptured eyes of Tremanos, the young Apache brave, from the hilltop to which he had climbed with weary footsteps, followed by the gaunt shadow of death, dazed by the phantoms on the distant horizon, lured on by mystic spirit music brought to him on the wings of the scorching winds; and he had gone with glad heart down into the rich and verdant plains of "Tejas, the Beautiful."

Not far from the picturesque old city of San Antonio was the Huisache, one of the three springs which join to form the San Antonio River. Along its banks the gray dove's sad note was heard. When the two Indian sisters, "Flower of Gladness" and "Flower of Pity," used to come down to drink from the Spring of the Huisache the song of the dove was all of joy. A youthful Indian brave of rare enchantment came into their lives and brought love and treachery, and the assassin's knife felled the Indian youth on the brink of the Huisache. "Flower of Pity," coming to the spring, found the lifeless form of the young warrior and snatched the knife from the wound and plunged it into her own heart. A little later "Flower of Gladness" found her sister and the Indian brave dead by the water's edge and straightway went mad. Manitou graciously allowed the poor lost soul to find a voice for its woes in the note of the dove and henceforth she was the mourning dove. The lives of the youth and maiden, floating out in white clouds of mist, descended into the earth and became two living springs which united with the Huisache to form the San Antonio River.

In her story of "Inez," founded upon the most tragic event in the history of the Lone Star State, the defence of the Alamo, Miss Evans thus described the scene from the viewpoint of the newly arrived immigrant:

The river wound around the town like an azure girdle, gliding along the surface and reflecting in its deep blue waters the rustling tule which fringed the margin. An occasional pecan or live-oak flung a majestic shadow athwart its azure bosom. Now and then a clump of willows sigh low in the evening breeze. Far away to the north stretched a mountain range, blue in the distance; to the south lay the luxuriant valley of the stream. The streets were narrow and laid out with a total disregard of the points of the compass.

By this river of romantic beauty and old-time myth Augusta Evans spent two of youth's impressionable years. On Main Plaza, near the Alamo, where the Frost National Bank now stands, was the Evans store, where she, the daughter of the store-keeper, lived. Almost under the shadow of the tragically historic old mission, by the park near which Santa Ana had his headquarters, she received the incentive and gathered the material for her first novel, "Inez," written in her own room at night as a gift with which to surprise her father and mother. The work of a girl of fifteen, it did not appeal to many readers, but it contained a vivid description of the inspired heroism and self-sacrifice of the men whose deeds crowned the history of Texas with the sanctity of the supreme glory of self-immolation upon the altar of patriotism. We have fallen upon commercial days now, and the traditions of the old Alamo circle around a warehouse. Alamo Plaza is now the scene of the annual "Battle of the Flowers," a joyous and beautiful occasion which throws a fragrant floral veil about the terrible memories that gloom over the place.

At the close of the two years spent in San Antonio, the family returned to Columbus and later found a home in Mobile, Alabama, the town of the "Maubila," Choctaw, Indians. It is a pleasant town of shaded streets, romantic drives and beautiful homes. Its history reaches back through the centuries to a time long before the United States had being, and it is the only American city that has seen five flags wave over it: French, English, Spanish, United States and Confederate.

While in this home Augusta Evans became widely known through the publication in 1859 of her second novel, "Beulah." Then came the war, bringing forth her one war-novel, "Macaria." "Vashti," "St. Elmo," "Infelice," "At the Mercy of Tiberius," the latter being her best, followed in quick succession, until her marriage put a close to her work, for Mr. Wilson was unwilling that she should tax her strength by close application. Life in the delightful home furnished interest enough to make resort to fiction unnecessary as an entertainment. In 1879 the death of Mr. Wilson ended the idyllic home life and she returned to her desk, writing "The Speckled Bird" and "Devota," with a pen that had lost much of its charm in the days of happy absorption.