JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (UNCLE REMUS)JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (UNCLE REMUS)AT ATLANTA
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (UNCLE REMUS)
Joel Chandler Harris is at home in a neat cottage of the familiar Southern type, which nestles near the bosom of a grove of sweet gum and pine trees in the little village of West Point, about three miles from the heart of the “Southern Chicago,” as Georgians delight to call Atlanta. In the grove a mocking-bird family sings. Around the house are a few acres of ground, which are carefully cultivated. In one corner graze a group of beautiful Minerva-eyed Jerseys. At one side of the house hives of bees are placed near a flower garden sloping down to the street, which passes in front of the house several rods distant. At the foot of the road is a bubbling mineral spring, whose sparkling water supplies the needs of the household. A superb English mastiff eyes with dignified glance the casual visitor whose coming is apt to be announced by the bark of two of the finest dogs in the country, one a bulldog, the other a white English bull-terrier.Mr.Harris’sneighbors are few, but one who is his closest friend calls for mention. It isMr.Evan P. Howell, whose manor is across the way. He is a member of a distinguished Georgia family, whose name is known at the North through Howell Cobb, a former Secretary of the Treasury.Mr.Howell himself has become known to the general public as having declined the Manchester Consulate to retain his present position as chief editor and owner of the AtlantaConstitution, in whose pages, byMr.Howell’s persuasion, Uncle Remus made his first appearance. The interior of the cottage is simple and unassuming. Bric-à-brac and trumpery “articles of bigotry and virtue” are absent. The places they generally occupy are taken up with wide windows and generous hearths. Of literary litter there is none. There are few books, but they have been read and re-read, and they are the best of books. The house is not a library, a museum, nor an art-gallery, but it is evidently a home in which children take the place of inanimate objects of devotion.
It is natural thatMr.Harris’s home should be simple, and call for little elaborate description. He was born and brought up among simple, sincere people, whose wants were few, whose tastes were easily satisfied, whose lives were natural and untainted by any such influences as make for cerebral hyperæmia, or other neurasthenic complaintsincidental, asDr.Hammond says, to modern city life. The village of Eatonton, in Middle Georgia, wasMr.Harris’s birth-place. SinceMr.Henry Watterson, in his book on Southern humor, and other writers, have madeMr.Harris an older man than he really is, it is well to state, as “official,” that he was born on the 9th of December, 1848. Eatonton is a small town now, but it was smaller then. It was surrounded by plantations, and on one of theseMr.Harris spent his earliest years as other Southern children do. At six he began to read. Among the first of his literary acquaintances was the delightful “Vicar of Wakefield.” The boy’s schooling was such as reading the best of the authors of the periods of Queen Anne and the Georges, and a few terms at the Eatonton Academy, could give. He read his text-books, but was bitterly opposed to getting them by heart. When he was about twelve years old an incident occurred which shaped his whole life. The Eatonton postmaster kept a sort of general store—the “country store” of New England,—and its frequenters were at liberty to read the copies of the Milledgeville and other rural papers which were taken by subscribers. In one of these,The Countryman, young Harris found that it was edited by aMr.Turner, whose acquaintance he had made not very long before, and he thrilled with the thought that he knew areal editor. Finding that a boy was wanted he wrote for the place, secured it, and soon learned all that was to be gathered in so small an office. In addition to this acquirement of knowledge, by the permission ofMr.Turner, he had access to a library of three thousand volumes, which he read under the judicious guidance of their owner. Among these books he lived for several years in the very heart of the agricultural region, and he pondered over his reading to the music of the clicking types, with the scamper of the cat-squirrels over the roof and the patter of the acorns dropped by the jay-birds. For amusement he hunted rabbits with a pack of half-bred harriers, or listened to the tales of the plantation Negro, who was there to be found in primitive perfection of type. It was on the Turner plantation that the original Uncle Remus told his stories to the little boy. So it was that he absorbed the wonderfully complete stores of knowledge of the Negro which have since given him fame. He heard the Negro’s stories and enjoyed them, observed his characteristics and appreciated them. Time went on. The printer boy set type, read books, hunted rabbits, ’possums, and foxes, was seized with an ambition to write, and had begun to do so when Sherman’s army went marching through Georgia. Slocum’s corps was reviewed by Harris sitting astride a fence. This parade leftthe neighborhood in chaos, and young Harris andThe Countrymantook a long vacation. At last peace and quiet and the issue ofThe Countrymanwere restored. But the paper had had its day.
Mr.Harris was now a full-fledged compositor, and he set his “string” of the Macon DailyTelegraphfor some months. Then he left to go to New Orleans as the private secretary of the editor ofThe Crescent Monthly. This position was not arduous, andMr.Harris found time to write bright paragraphs for the city press at about the same time that George W. Cable was trying his hand at the same kind of work.The Crescent Monthlysoon waned, and with its endMr.Harris found himself back in Georgia as editor of the ForsythAdvertiser, which was and is one of the most influential weekly papers in Georgia. He was not only editor, but he set most of the type, worked off the edition on a hand-press, and wrapped and directed his papers for the mail. His editorials here, directed against certain abuses in the State, were widely copied for their pungent criticism and bubbling humor. They attracted the attention of Colonel W. T. Thompson, author of “Major Jones’s Courtship,” who was then editor of the SavannahDaily News, and he offeredMr.Harris a place on his staff. It was accepted. This was in 1871. In 1873Mr.Harris was married. He remained in Savannah until September,1876, when the yellow-fever epidemic caused him to go up in the mountains to Atlanta, where he became an editor of theConstitution. At that time the paper was beginning to make a more than local reputation by the humorous Negro dialect sketches byMr.S. W. Small, under the name of “Old Si.” Shortly afterMr.Harris’s arrivalMr.Small left theConstitutionto engage in another enterprise, and the proprietors, in their anxiety to replace one of the most attractive features of their paper, turned toMr.Harris for aid. He was required to furnish two or three sketches a week. He took an old Negro with whom he had been familiar on the Turner place, and made him chief spokesman in several character sketches. Their basis was the projection of the old-time Negro against the new condition of things brought about by the War.
These succeeded well; but tiring of them after awhile, he wrote one night the first sketch as it appears in the published volume, “Uncle Remus.” To the North this was a revelation of an unknown life. The slight but strong frame in which the old Negro’s portrait was set, the playful propinquity of smiles and tears, and the fresh humor and absolute novelty of the folk-lore tale existing as a hidden treasure in the South, were revealed for the first time to critical admiration. The sketches were widely copied in leadingjournals, like the staidEvening Postof New York. Both theConstitutionandMr.Harris soon found that they had a national reputation. When the volume containing the collected sketches was published, it was an immediate success. It was soon reprinted in England; and still sells steadily in large numbers, giving exquisite pleasure to thousands of children and their elders. A second collection of tales, most of which were published inThe Century, but some of which made their first appearance inThe Critic, was republished in 1883, and in that yearMr.Harris was introduced anew to the general public as the writer of a sketch in Harper’sChristmas, which showed for the first time that the firm and artistic hand which drew the Negro to perfection had mastered equally well the most difficult art of elaborate character-drawing and of dramatic development. “Mingo,” the first successful short story ofMr.Harris, was followed by “At Teague Poteet’s” inThe Century.
I have dwelt somewhat at length on the incidents ofMr.Harris’s career for three reasons: first, because the facts have never before been printed; second, because they illustrate in a remarkable way the influence of environment on a literary intellect, whose steady, healthy, progressive growth and development can be clearly traced; and third, because it is evident thatMr.Harris is a young man who has passed over the plains of apprenticeship and is mounting the hill of purely literary fame, whose acclivity he has overcome by making a further exertion of the strength and power which he has indicated though not fully displayed. At present he lives two lives. One is that of his profession. His duties are arduous, and consume much of his time. Much of the best work in theConstitution, which has given that paper fame as a representative of “the new South,” is due toMr.Harris. In the history of Southern journalism he will occupy a high place for having introduced in that part of the United States personal amenities and freedom from sectional tone. He has discussed national topics broadly and sincerely, in a style which is effective in “molding public opinion,” but which is not literature. His second life begins where the other ends. It is literally divided as day is from night, for his editorial work is done at theConstitutionoffice in the day-time, and his literary work is done at home at night. On the one side he works for bread and butter, on the other he works for art, and from the motive that always exists in the best literary art. At home he is hardest at work when apparently most indolent, and he allows his characters to gallop around in his brain and develop long before he touches pen to paper. When he reaches this stage hiswork is slow and careful, and in marked contrast to his editorial work, which is dashed off at white heat, as such work must be.
Perhaps the best illustration I can give of his methods is to describe the genesis of “At Teague Poteet’s,” which may also be interesting as giving an insight into the work of creative authorship. The trial of two United States Deputy-Marshals for the killing of an under-witted, weak, unarmed, and inoffensive old man, who was guilty only of the crime of having a private still for “moonshine”—not a member of the mountain band,—was progressing in Atlanta when the subject of simple proper names as titles of stories came up in theConstitutionoffice. One of the staff cited Scott’s “Ivanhoe,” Thackeray’s “Pendennis,” and Dickens’s “David Copperfield” as instances of books which were likely to attract readers by their titles, and taking up a Georgia state-directory, the speaker’s eye fell on the name Teague Poteet. He suggested toMr.Harris that if he merely took that name and wove around it the story of the moonshiner’s trial, it would attract as many readers as Uncle Remus; and it was further suggested thatMr.Harris should make a column sketch of the subject for the next Sunday’sConstitution. From this simple beginning Teague Poteet grew after several months’ incubation, and when itwas published inThe Centuryit will be remembered how the public hailed it as disclosing a new phase of American life, similar to those revealed by Cable, Craddock and the rest of the new generation. No one unfamiliar with the people can fully appreciate how truthful and exact is the description of characteristics; or how accurately the half-humorous, half-melancholy features of the stern drama of life in the locality are wrought out, yielding promise of greater things to come.
In personMr.Harris has few peculiarities. In stature he is of the average height of the people of his section, rather under the average height of the people of the Eastern and Middle States. The Northern papers have spoken ofMr.Cable as a little man. He andMr.Harris are about of a size, which is not much excelled in their section except by the lank giants of the mountains. His features are small. His face is tanned and freckled. His mouth is covered by a stubbly red mustache, and his eyes are small and blue. Both his eyes and mouth are extremely mobile, sensitive and expressive. There is probably no living man more truly diffident; but his diffidence is the result of excessive sympathy and tenderness, which cause the bright blue eyes to well up at any bit of pathos just as they fairly sparkle with humor. His amusements and tastes arefew and simple. His constant companions are Shakspeare, Job,St.Paul, and Ecclesiastes. He is devoted to his family, which consists of his mother, his wife, four exceedingly bright boys and a girl, and the flock of mocking-birds that winters in his garden. He never goes into society or to the theatre. He once acted as dramatic critic of theConstitution, but his misery at being obliged to see and criticise dull actors was so acute that he soon resigned the position. The small-talk of society has no attractions for him. His home is enough. When his children are tired and sleepy and are put to bed, he writes at the fireside where they have been sitting. It is warm in winter, and cool in summer, and never lonely; and so strong is his domestic instinct that although he had a room built specially as a study, he soon deserted its lonely cheerlessness for the comforts of his home, where his tender and kindly nature makes him loved by every one.
Erastus Brainerd.