[THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN RECENT SOUTHERN LITERATURE.]
BY C. ALPHONSO SMITH, A. M., PH. D.
The year 1870 marks an epoch in the history of the South. It witnessed not only the death of Robert E. Lee but the passing also of John Pendleton Kennedy, George Denison Prentice, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, and William Gilmore Simms. In literature it was not only the end of the old but the beginning of the new, for in 1870 the new movement in Southern literature may be said to have been inaugurated in the work of Irwin Russell. I have attempted elsewhere to trace briefly the chronological outlines of this literature from 1870 to the present time. In this paper, therefore, I shall discuss not the history of this literature but rather the history in this literature.
When we compare Southern literature of ante-bellum days with that produced since 1870 we note at once certain obvious differences of style and structure. In the older literature the sentences are longer, the paragraphs less coherent, adjectives more abundant, descriptions more elaborate, plots more intricate and fanciful. In the newer literature the pen is held more firmly; there are fewer episodes; incidents are chosen to illustrate character rather than to enhance the plot; the language is more temperate; the pathos and humor more subtle; some fixed goal is kept in view and the action of the story converges steadily toward this end.
But apart from these stylistic and structural differences there are differences that appeal to the student of history equally as much as to the student of pure literature. Since 1870 Southern writers have begun to find their topics and their inspiration in the life that is round about them. They are resorting not so much to books as to memory, observation and experience. They are not rising into solitary and selfish renown; they are lifting the South with them. They are writing Southern history because they are describing Southern life. The writings of Irwin Russell, Sidney Lanier, Joel Chandler Harris, Miss Murfree, George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, James Lane Allen, Miss Grace King, Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart, and John Fox, Jr., are spreading a knowledge of Southern life and Southern conditions where such knowledge has never penetrated before. And though we call this literature Southern, it is neither sectional in its appeal nor provincial in its workmanship. This, then, is what I mean by the historical element in recent Southern literature.
It has long seemed to me that much of the immediate influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin both in this country and in England was due to the fact that the South could not show in all of its ante-bellum literature a single novel treating the same themes treated by Mrs. Stowe, but treating them from a different point of view. It was the first attempt to portray in vivid colors the social and institutional conditions of the South. None of our writers had utilized the material that lay ready to their hands. There was no story written in the spirit of Marse Chan or Uncle Remus which the South could hold up and say,
"Look here, upon this picture, and on this."
The reception accorded Mrs. Stowe's book in the South teaches a valuable lesson, and a lesson which Southern writers have for thirty years profited by Uncle Tom's Cabin was met by bitter criticism, by argument, by denunciation, by denial, or by contemptuous silence. But the appeal made by a literary masterpiece, however deficient or faulty in its premises, is not thus to be negatived. The true answer to Uncle Tom's Cabin and the most adequate answer that could be given is to be found in the historical note that characterizes the work of Irwin Russell and those who have succeeded him.
I wish to state, therefore, in somewhat broader terms than I have yet seen it stated, what seems to me the historical importance of Irwin Russell in American literature. His priority in the fictional use of the negro dialect has been frequently emphasized, but I wish to emphasize his priority in utilizing for literary purposes the social and institutional conditions in which he himself had lived. Skill in the use of a dialect is a purely literary excellence, but when a writer portrays and thus perpetuates the peculiar life of a people numbering four million, he is to that extent an historian; and Irwin Russell's example in this respect meant a complete change of front in Southern literature. He did not go to Italy for his inspiration as Richard Henry Wilde had done. You find no Rodolph, or Hymns to the Gods, or Voyage to the Moon among his writings; but you will find that deeper poetic vision that saw pathos and humor and beauty in the humble life that others had contemned.