John Lothrop Motley.—The fame of Motley’s historical work has obscured the reputation of his fiction. “Morton’s Hope, or The Memoirs of a Provincial” (1839), like “Hyperion,” recalls the interest in German university life which was becoming general in America—a life which Motley vividly describes. From Germany the hero returns to participate in the American Revolution, in which he distinguishes himself. In “Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony” (1849), Motley utilised the story of Thomas Morton, the jolly Royalist who with his followers settled near Boston in 1626 and whose revelry shocked his staid Puritan neighbours. As a historical picture, it has high value. Both of these novels, abounding in carefully wrought descriptions and gleams of genuine humour, deserved greater success than they had.
Caroline M. Kirkland.—A similar service was done for life in Michigan by Caroline M. Kirkland (1801–64), whose humorous and lively descriptions of frontier life, “A New Home; Who’ll Follow?” (1839), “Forest Life” (1842), and “Western Clearings” (1846), were in their day successful and popular. Mrs. Kirkland’s early works were published over the pen-name of “Mrs. Mary Clavers.” Her literary career extended over a quarter of a century, and she was long a popular contributor to magazines and annuals.
The Forties.—The decade of 1840–50 saw the advent of no writers of enduring reputation. “Charles Elwood, or The Infidel Converted” (1840), a kind of philosophical autobiography by Orestes A. Brownson (1803–76), is really an essay in the guise of a novel, and can here only be mentioned. Brownson was successively a Presbyterian, a Universalist, a Unitarian, and a Roman Catholic; as a thinker, he might be called a Christian Socialist. Epes Sargent (1813–80), a student at Harvard College, who became a journalist and a popular dramatist, was the author of several juveniles, two of which, “Wealth and Worth” (1840) and “What’s to be Done?” (1841), had a large sale; and of two now forgotten novels, “Fleetwood, or The Stain of Birth” (1845) and “Peculiar, a Tale of the Great Transition” (1864), a story of changes in the South in the Civil War. Washington Allston’s “Monaldi” (1841), an Italian romance with an Othello-like motif, really belongs to an earlier generation, having been written as early as 1821, and intended apparently for publication in Dana’s Idle Man. It is a powerful but harrowing story in which the progress of jealousy is traced throughout its course. Maria J. McIntosh (1803–78), losing her fortune in the panic of 1837, adopted authorship as a means of support and wrote a number of juveniles, the first of which was “Blind Alice” (1841), and all of which were intended to illustrate the moral sentiments. Some of her stories were reprinted in London; and she continued to write for more than twenty years. Maria Brooks (1795–1845), a once highly praised but now forgotten poet, in 1843 privately printed a prose romance, “Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri,” which was really an autobiography, including much poetical description and reflection.
Sylvester Judd.—The most successful picture of old New England life ever written, down to the time of its publication (1845), was “Margaret, a Tale of the Real and Ideal.” It was this book which Lowell, in his “Fable for Critics,” spoke of as
the first Yankee book
With the soul of Down East in ’t, and things farther East,
As far as the threshold of morning, at least,
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true,
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new.
The author, Sylvester Judd (1813–53), was a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Yale College, who had become a Unitarian clergyman and settled in Augusta, Maine; and his purpose in writing was “to promote the cause of liberal Christianity.” Had he kept this purpose more in the background, his place among the greater novelists would have been sure; for he had observed closely every phase of Puritan life and possessed rare gifts of realistic and dramatic story-telling. Not only does he correctly describe the externals of New England places and people, down to the niceties of dialect; but he also interprets with rare and poetic insight the moral and spiritual conflicts into which his characters are drawn. Another novel similar to “Margaret,” “Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family,” appeared in 1850; it deals with the career of a New England country youth. Like Margaret, the hero has altogether too many “experiences”—introduced in order to point the moral. Yet on the whole the realism of these novels is wholesome and fresh and true.
Herman Melville.—A follower of Cooper—though at some distance in point of quality—in writing stories of the sea, was Herman Melville (1819–91). A native of New York, he spent the greater part of the years 1837–44 in voyages to the Pacific. Of his observations and exciting experiences he made good use in a long series of tales, the first of which, “Typee” (1846), narrated his adventures in the Marquesas. The general perception of the growing importance of the Pacific doubtless aided in securing for Melville’s stories the most favourable reception, both in America and in England. “Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas” (1847) continued the earlier story, with no less vivid pictures of sailor life, fights with savages, and thrilling escapes. His next story, “Mardi, and a Voyage Thither” (1849), was an attempt at a philosophical romance contrasting European civilisation and Polynesian savagery, and, though it contained some able descriptions, its vagaries and lack of sobriety doomed it to failure. “Redburn, His First Voyage” (1849) tells of a journey to England, and includes some realistic horrors; it could hardly be popular. “The White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War” (1850) is a photographic narrative of experiences on board a United States frigate. Melville’s masterpiece was “Moby Dick, or The Whale” (1851); though an uneven work of excessive length, written partly in a strained, Carlylesque style, it nevertheless fills the reader with the fascination of the sea. The fierce contest of Captain Ahab with the great whale, which “becomes a representative of moral evil in the world,” is not unworthy of the pen of a greater writer. Melville never afterward came up to the standard of this work, though he wrote several other stories and novels, among them “Pierre, or The Ambiguities” (1852), “Israel Potter” (1855), narrating the adventures of a Revolutionary soldier, and praised by Hawthorne for its portraits of Paul Jones and Benjamin Franklin, “The Piazza Tales” (1856), and “The Confidence Man” (1857).
Mrs. Judson and Others.—Mrs. Emily Chubbuck Judson (1817–54), third wife of the celebrated Baptist missionary Dr. Adoniram Judson, and best known by her pen name of “Fanny Forester,” in her “Alderbrook” (1846), a collection of village sketches, described girl life in New England, winning a reputation which lasted for many years. Peter Hamilton Myers (1812–78), a Brooklyn lawyer, was for a brief time remembered for his historical romances, “The First of the Knickerbockers, a Tale of 1673” (1848), “The Young Patroon, or Christmas in 1690” (1849), “The King of the Hurons” (1849), and “The Prisoner of the Border, a Tale of 1838” (1857). Charles Wilkins Webber (1819–56), the son of a Kentucky physician, inherited from his mother a fondness for out-of-door life, and spent some years in Texas. Then he tried in succession medicine, theology, and authorship. His stories and descriptions of South-western life and adventure include “Old Hicks the Guide” (1848), “The Hunter Naturalist” (1851–53), illustrated by his wife, “Tales of the Southern Border” (1852), and “Shot in the Eye” (1853), his best story. He died in the battle of Rivas, in Central America.
Mayo, Kimball, and Wise.—William Starbuck Mayo (1812–95), a New York physician, travelled in the Barbary States, and on returning home wrote two popular novels, “Kaloolah, or Journeyings in the Djebel Kumri” (1849) and “The Berber, or The Mountaineer of the Atlas” (1850). The former purports to be the autobiography of Jonathan Romer, who, after numerous exciting adventures in the American woods, goes to Africa, has various hair’s-breadth escapes, fights with slave-traders and natives, and marries a beautiful dusky princess. In its satirical remarks on civilised usages it imitates “Gulliver.” “The Berber,” a story of more regular construction, is still enjoyable. It recounts events supposed to take place in Africa at the close of the seventeenth century, and like its predecessor contains minutely accurate descriptions of tropical scenery and animal life. Richard B. Kimball’s “St. Leger, or The Threads of Life” (1849), reprinted from The Knickerbocker, was a serious attempt to depict a mind in pursuit of truth in a story in which romantic adventure plays some part; but the characters are not strongly marked. Henry Augustus Wise (1819–69), son of a naval officer and himself a lieutenant in the Navy, saw the humorous and comic side of the seaman’s life, and chronicled his impressions in “Los Gringos, or An Inside View of Mexico and California” (1849), and still more successfully in his sprightly and sentimental “Tales for the Marines” (1855), in which all sorts of marvellous and amusing things happen.