GEORGE W. CABLE.
“THE DEPICTOR OF CREOLE LIFE IN THE SOUTH.”
T is said “Circumstances make the man;” and, again, “Seeming misfortunes are often blessings in disguise.” Whether this is generally true or not, at least in the case of George W. Cable, it has so turned out; for it was poverty and necessity that drove him through a vicissitude of circumstances which stored his mind with observations and facts that enabled him to open a new field of fiction, introducing to the outside world a phase of American life hitherto unsuspected save by those who have seen it. His rendering of the Creole dialect with its French and Spanish variations and mixtures is full of originality. He has depicted the social life of the Louisiana lowlands, with its Creole and negro population, so vividly that many whose portraits he has drawn have taken serious offence at his books. But it is no doubt the truth that hurts, and if so, it should be borne for the sake of history, and it is to the credit of Mr. Cable’s integrity as an author that he has not sacrificed the truth to please his friends. His books have also been the means of effecting wholesome changes in the contract system of convict labor in several Southern States.
George W. Cable was born October 12, 1844, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was a Virginian and his mother a New Englander. They removed to New Orleans in 1837. In 1859 Mr. Cable failed in business and died soon after, leaving the family in a straightened condition, and the son—then fifteen years of age—was compelled to leave school and take a clerkship in a store. This he retained until, at the age of nineteen, he volunteered in the service of the Confederate Army, joining the Fourth Mississippi Cavalry, and followed the fortunes of the Southern cause until it was lost. He was said to have been a gallant soldier, was once wounded and narrowly escaped with his life. All his spare moments in camp were given to study.
After the surrender of General Lee, Cable—a young man of twenty-one—returned to New Orleans, penniless, and took employment as an errand boy in a store. From there he drifted to Kosciusko, Mississippi, where he studied civil engineering, and joined a surveying party on bayous Têche and Atchafalaya—the native heath of the Creole—and it was here that his keen observation gathered the material which has since done him so much service.
Cable first began writing to the “New Orleans Picayune” under the nom-de-plume of “Drop Shot,” and his articles evinced a power which soon opened the way to a regular place on the editorial staff of the paper. This position he retained until he was asked to write a theatrical criticism. Cable had rigid religious scruples—piety being one of his marked characteristics—always avoided attendance of the theatre, and he now refused to go, and resigned his position rather than violate his conscience.
Leaving the editorial rooms of the “Picayune,” Cable secured a position as accountant in a cotton-dealer’s office, which he retained until 1879, when the death of his employer threw him out of position. Meantime his sketches of Creole life had been appearing in “Scribner’s Monthly,” and were received with so much favor that he determined to leave business and devote his life to literature. Accordingly, in 1885, he removed North, living at Simsbury, Connecticut, Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York, which he has since made his headquarters, with a continual growing popularity, his books bringing him an ample competency.
Among the published works of this author we mention as the most prominent: “Old Creole Days” (1879–1883); “The Grandissimes” (1880); “Madame Delphine” (1881); “Dr. Sevier” (1883); “The Creoles of Louisiana” (1884); “The Silent South” (1885); “Bonaventure” (1888); “Strange True Stories of Louisiana” (1889); “The Negro Question” and “Life of William Gilmore Sims” (1890); “John March Southerner,” and some later works which the author continues to add at the rate of one book a year.