Mrs. Chanler, or Amélie Rives as she still styles herself in writing, was born in Richmond, Virginia, but passed her early life at the family place in Albemarle County, called “Castle Hill.” She is a granddaughter of William Cabell Rives, once minister to France and author of “Life of Madison”; and her grandmother, Mrs. Judith Walker Rives, was a woman of much ability, and left some writings entitled “Home and the World,” and “Residence in Europe.”
She was married in 1888 to Mr. John Armstrong Chanler of New York and has since spent much time in Paris, studying painting for which she has as great fondness as for writing.
Her first stories were written in the style of the time of Shakspere; the best of them is “Farrier Lass o’ Piping Pebworth.” They created a sensation as they came out and were said to be the work of a girl under twenty. She has also written stories of Virginia life and of modern times; besides poems, and dramas, in which last her talents seem to reach a higher plane than in any other kind of writing.
WORKS.
A Brother to Dragons.
Farrier Lass o’ Piping Pebworth.
Virginia of Virginia.
The Quick or the Dead?
According to St. John.
Athelwold, [drama].
Barbara Dering, [sequel to The Quick or the Dead?]
Nurse Crumpet Tells the Story.
Story of Arnon.
Inja.
Witness of the Sun.
Herod and Mariamne, [drama].
Poems, [scattered in magazines].
Tanis, the Sang-Digger.
TANIS.
(From Tanis, the Sang-Digger.[49])
Gilman was driving along one of the well-kept turnpikes that wind about the Warm Springs Valley. He recognized the austere and solemn beauty that hemmed him in from the far-off outer world; but at the same time he was contrasting it with the sea-coast of his native State, Massachusetts, and a certain creeping homesickness began to rise about his heart.
