The Hoosiers

by Meredith Nicholson

Mr. Tarkington has a perfect appreciation of the strength of local affection in the Hoosier, and also of the thoroughly American absorption in politics which seems to be more marked in county seats of a few thousand inhabitants than in large cities. History in towns like Plattville is not dated, anno urbis conditæ, but from a political incident or the visit of a President; and a national campaign is a quadrennial blessing that renews in the obscurest inhabitant the sense of his individual responsibility to the government. Mr. Tarkington emphasizes the homogeneity of the Middle Western folk; and this is warranted fully by the statisticians. The people of his town live together like a great, kind family, who are sufficient unto themselves. He has thrown into the story the sincerity, affection, and loyalty that are their attributes; and he adds, moreover, the atmosphere of the Indiana landscape, with a nice appreciation of its loveliness, sometimes hinted and often charmingly expressed. There is a crisp, bracing quality in the writing that fitly accompanies the story, which is, taken all in all, one of the most creditable novels yet written of life in the Ohio Valley. There is every reason why Mr. Tarkington should know his Indiana well, as his family has been prominent in the State for three generations, and he is a native, having been born at Indianapolis (1869). He was educated at Purdue and Princeton, receiving from the latter the degree of A.M. in 1898. He has also written (1900) “Monsieur Beaucaire,” a dramatic novelette of the eighteenth century, in which a few striking incidents are handled most effectively. The story has the charm of an exquisite miniature.

Indiana village life has been made the subject of careful study by Anna Nicholas, in a series of short stories collected under the title “An Idyl of the Wabash” (1899). Religious phenomena have greatly attracted Miss Nicholas, and she has supplemented Dr. Eggleston’s studies of an earlier period with her artistic sketches of contemporary life. The social importance of the church, the vagaries of belief in a typical Western village, and the intensity of the “revival” spirit are treated with sympathy and humor. Several of these tales are, between the lines, a tribute to that vigorous Protestant evangelization of Indiana, which triumphed over mud and malaria and carried the gospel far beyond the sound of church bells. Miss Nicholas has written with keen penetration of the suppressed tragic element in rural life, but without morbidity. Her characters are always inevitably related to the incidents, and she communicates with unfailing success a sense of the humble atmosphere of her farm and village. These stories are distinguished by the evident sincerity of their purpose to reflect life honestly, and they are written in a straightforward manner that aids the impression. They illustrate anew the possibilities of a local literature that follows progressively the formative years of a community’s life. It is even now difficult to persuade the present generations of Indianians that Dr. Eggleston’s Hoosiers ever lived; and Miss Nicholas, Mr. Riley, and Mr. Tarkington have continued the story that was begun by their predecessor, adding chapters equally instructive and valuable.

Mary Jameson Judah’s “Down Our Way” (1897) is not limited to a particular region, but combines with studies of the author’s own Indiana, sketches of social life at the South. The allurements of those organizations for individual improvement and general reform that have enlisted the energies of so many women in recent years have appealed to Mrs. Judah’s sense of humor; and her stories show a fine appreciation of the niceties of social perspective and proportion in Southern and Western cities. The short story is happily adapted to the need of the casual observer of local life, and tales like these, which bear the stamp of fidelity, have an inestimable value for future students.

An increasing attention to local historical matters has lately been marked, and an excellent instance of this is afforded by Millard Cox (“Henry Scott Clark”) in “The Legionaries” (1899), a story of the Morgan raid into Indiana. The political and social conditions on the Indiana-Kentucky border during the Civil War were interesting, and worthy of the study that has been given to them in this novel. The military episode of which Morgan was the chief figure, though slight in comparison with the larger movements of the war, was dramatic and daring, and it lends itself well to this romantic setting. Mr. Cox is a native Indianian (1856).

James A. Wickersham, an Indiana educator, has analyzed certain religious conditions minutely in “Enoch Willoughby” (1900). This is a novel of character rather than of incident, and marks still another departure in method among writers of the Indiana group. The tale is not wholly indigenous, as the characters belong as truly to one State as to another of the Middle West. The Willoughbys are studied as a family in which peculiarities have always been observed, and in Enoch an hereditary “queerness” is manifested in religious idiosyncrasies.

The revival of interest in romantic fiction, that marked the closing years of the century, witnessed the unusual successes of a number of novels by American authors. One of the most popular romances of this period is “When Knighthood was in Flower” (1898), by Charles Major, a native of Indianapolis (1856), who is living at Shelbyville, twenty miles distant from the capital. Mr. Major served no apprenticeship as an author; this romance was his first book. He was educated in the Indiana public schools and at the University of Michigan, and was actively engaged in the practice of law when he wrote the novel, as a diversion, on his Sunday afternoons at home. The friendliness of the English-reading public to this tale is not difficult to understand. It is a love story whose chief characters, Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor, possess those qualities of youth, vivacity, and spirit that so inevitably win the heart in fiction or the drama. The tale is told by Sir Edwin Caskoden, a master of the dance at the court of Henry VIII., and not by the author direct,—a familiar trick of the historical novelist; and it serves an excellent purpose, affording a valid excuse for the ostensible editor to render the sixteenth-century narrative of Caskoden into racy nineteenth-century English. This novel is one of the noteworthy achievements of Indianians in the field of romance, suggesting again what has been so true of General Wallace,—that the imagination is superior to all laws, and that the romantic vision easily pierces barriers of circumstance.

George Cary Eggleston, a brother of Edward, was born at Vevay (1839), received his preliminary education in the schools of Vevay and Madison, and attended Asbury University, but did not complete his course there. When still under seventeen he took charge of a school in a wild district of the State, but at the end of his engagement he went to Virginia to the old homestead of his father’s family, completed his college course, studied law, and served in the Confederate army. He has for many years been a well-known New York journalist, and he is the author of many books. He has always maintained relations with his native State, and has utilized his knowledge of it in his writings. In his novel “A Man of Honor” (1873), the hero is an Indiana boy, the son of a Kentucky mother and a Virginia father, as was the case with Mr. Eggleston himself. Another novel, “Juggernaut” (1891), opens in Indiana. A Hoosier boy is the hero, and the description of his early life among the hills of southern Indiana is pleasantly reminiscent of the author’s own experiences. In a number of juvenile stories, among them being “The Last of the Flat-boats” (1900), Mr. Eggleston has drawn upon his recollections of Hoosierdom, and there is, he says, something of Indiana in everything that he has written. Before Mr. Eggleston had seriously begun literary work the name of his brother Edward was so identified with Hoosier soil that the younger man could hardly invade it with literary intent without risking the charge of imitation; yet it is significant of the tenacity of his early impressions that throughout his life the scenes of his childhood and youth have continued to invite his imagination.

II. History and Politics

It is a pleasure to include George W. Julian (1817-1899) among those who have added lustre to Indiana’s name. He was born at Centerville, Wayne County, of Quaker parents who had followed the familiar line of march from North Carolina to Indiana. He worked in the fields, studied by the light of the fireplace, taught school, read law, and in general experienced those vicissitudes and embarrassments that beset so many ambitious American youths of his generation. The law was a stepping-stone to politics, and from 1840 until the last years of his long life he was constantly an eager observer of political movements when not an active participant in campaigns. He was a founder and leader of the Free-soil party, and was its candidate for the vice-presidency on the ticket headed by John P. Hale in 1852. He was repeatedly elected a representative in Congress, first as a Free-soil candidate, and thereafter as a Republican, from what was known as “the burnt district” in eastern Indiana, serving through the Civil War. He was a vigorous opponent of slavery, and his “Speeches on Political Subjects” (1872), for which Lydia Maria Child wrote an introduction, is a record of his radical opposition that began in 1850 and continued to the close of the rebellion. His integrity of opinion was unimpeachable. He was a laborious student, and, although without the graces of oratory, he was an impressive and effective speaker. He shared the ignominy that was visited upon Lovejoy, Phillips, Giddings, and others of the early antislavery phalanx, and his Congressional campaigns were marked by bitter and violent abuse from his opponents. His powers of invective made him a formidable antagonist. When his severity was criticised, he would say that “there is nothing in my speech but the truth that hurts.” He was essentially a reformer and an independent, and broke fearlessly with his party when he could not conscientiously follow it. Thus he joined in the Liberal Republican movement, and supported Greeley. He then became, and remained to the end of his life, a Democrat, and was appointed by Mr. Cleveland surveyor-general of New Mexico. He made his home for thirty years at Irvington, a suburb of Indianapolis and the seat of Butler College, where he was the village Nestor. He delighted in literature, lived among books, contributed often to the periodical press, and wrote (1892) the “Life of Joshua R. Giddings.”

Civic interests have marked also the career of William Dudley Foulke, who was born in New York City (1848) and educated at Columbia College, being graduated in 1869. Mr. Foulke’s antecedents were Quakers, and he removed, in 1876, to Wayne County, one of the principal centres of the Society of Friends in Indiana. Mr. Foulke practised law and sat in the State senate (1883-1885) as a Republican, but became an independent upon the nomination of Mr. Blaine, and thereafter gave his attention to various political reforms, notably in the civil service, conducting investigations and frequently delivering addresses. He published (1887) “Slav and Saxon,” an essay on the future of the two races which are, in his belief, to contend finally for supremacy in the world. He gave many years to the study of the war period in Indiana, with a view to writing the life of Oliver P. Morton, Indiana’s “War Governor,” who had been a citizen of Wayne County; and this biography (1899) is not only a thorough study of Morton’s public services, but of the period to which he belonged as well.