Nava Atlas's Blog, page 85

Sweet Lorraine — James Baldwin’s Tribute to Lorraine Hansberry

“Sweet Lorraine” is a love letter and tribute to Lorraine Hansberry by her friend and colleague, James Baldwin. It opens her posthumous book of collected writings, To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969). Both were relatively young artists when they first met in the winter of 1958. Lorraine, then 28, came to the Actors’ Studio where the stage version of Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room was being workshopped. He was then 34.

Both were aware of one another’s work, and Lorraine would soon go on to defend her new friend Jimmy’s charge to introduce theater audiences to black and queer themes. Broadway producers, not surprisingly for the time, were uncomfortable with the content of Giovanni’s Room. As she would throughout her brief but blazingly brilliant career, Lorraine believed that the artist’s voice in whatever medium was to be as an agent for social change. The two bonded, for Lorraine was developing her own black, feminist, and queer politics.

“I loved her, she was my sister,” wrote Baldwin, “and my comrade … We had that respect of each other which perhaps is only felt by people on the same side of the barricades …” Alas, their friendship would be intense but short-lived, since Lorraine was to live just six years longer. She died of pancreatic cancer at age 34. Her reputation would already by sealed by the time of her death as the award-winning playwright of A Raisin in the Sun and, to a lesser degree, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.

See also: To Be Young, Gifted and Black by Lorraine Hansberry

Here is a portion of James Baldwin’s “Sweet Lorraine, from the introductory pages of To Be Young, Gifted and Black (Prentice-Hall, © 1969):

An excerpt from “Sweet Lorraine” by James Baldwin

The first time I ever saw Lorraine was at the Actors’ Studio, in the winter of ’57-’58. She was there as an observer of the Workshop Production of Giovanni’s Room. She sat way up in the bleachers, taking on some of the biggest names in the American theatre because she had liked the play and they, in the main, hadn’t.

I was enormously grateful to her, she seemed to speak for me; and afterwards she talked to me with a gentleness and generosity never to be forgotten. A small, shy, determined person, with that strength dictated by absolutely impersonal ambitions: she was not trying to “make it” — she was trying to keep the faith.

We really met, however, in Philadelphia, in 1959, when A Raisin in the Sun was at the beginning of its amazing career. Much has been written about the play; I personally feel that it will demand a far less guilty and constricted people than the present-day Americans to be able to assess it at all; as an historical achievement, anyway, no one can gainsay its importance.

What is relevant here is that I had never in my life seen so many black people in the theater. And the reason was that before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much of the truth of black people’s lives been seen on the stage. Black people ignored the theater because the theater had always ignored them.

But, in Raisin, black people recognized that house and all the people in it — the mother, the son, the daughter and the daughter-in-law, and supplied the play with an interpretive element which could not be present in the minds of white people: a kind of claustrophobic terror, created not only by their knowledge of the house but by their knowledge of the streets. And when the curtain came down, Lorraine and I found ourselves in the backstage alley, where she was immediately mobbed.

I produced a pen and Lorraine handed me her hardback and began signing autographs. “It only happens once,” she said. I stood there and watched. I watched the people, who loved Lorraine for what she had brought to them; and watched Lorraine, who loved the people for what they had brought to her. It was not, for her, a matter of being admired. She was being corroborated and confirmed. She was wise enough and honest enough to recognize that black American artists area very special case. One is not merely an artist and one is not judged merely as an artist: the black people crowding around Lorraine, whether or not they consider her an artist, assuredly consider her a witness …

Much of the strain under which Lorraine worked was produced by her knowledge of this reality, and her determined refusal to be destroyed by it She was a very young woman, with an overpowering vision, and fame had come to her early — she must certainly have wished, often enough, that fame had seen fit to drag its feet a little.

For fame and recognition are not synonymous, especially not here, and her fame caused her to be criticized very harshly, very loudly, and very often by both black and white people who were unable to believe, apparently, that a really serious intention could be contained in so glamorous a frame …

When so bright a light goes out so early, when so gifted an artist goes so soon, we are left with a sorrow and wonder which speculation cannot assuage. One is filled for a long time with a sense of injustice as futile as it is powerful … Sometimes, very briefly, one hears the exact inflection of the voice, the exact timbre of the laugh — as I have, when watching this dramatic presentation, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, and in reading through these pages. But I do not have the heart to presume to assess her work, for all of it, for me, was suffused with the light which was Lorraine.

 

It’s well worth reading not only the remainder of Balwin’s tribute,

but also the various writings of Lorraine Hansberry in To Be Young, Gifted and Black

To Be Young, Gifted and Black on Amazon

More about the friendship of Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood by Lynnée Denise Bonner
James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry: Two Revolutionaries, One Heart, One Mind

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Anna Sewell

Anna Sewell (March 30, 1820 – April 25, 1878) was a British novelist who had only one published book — Black Beauty — to her name. She was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk in England, into a family that was devoutly Quaker. Anna’s mother, Mary Wright Sewell (who outlived her daughter by a few years) was herself an author of poetry and children’s books. Her father was a shopkeeper and bank clerk whose unstable income created great hardship for the family.

Anna and her brother Phillip were mainly educated at home by their mother. The family’s precarious financial situation compelled the children to stay with their grandparents from time to time, and they moved around the country frequently.

Permanent injury

At age 12, Anna began going to school for the first time after the family moved to Stoke Newington. Two years later, she fell while walking home from school and broke both of her ankles. The treatment was shoddy, and she never fully recovered. For  the rest of her life she was unable to stand or walk for very long, and endured a great deal of pain.

Anna’s declining health, in tandem with the family’s declining fortunes, compelled them to keep moving from place to place. In 1936, when she was 16, her father took a job in Brighton, hoping that its warmer climate would have a positive effect on her health. Anna followed her mother’s lead in leaving the Quaker community in favor of the Church of England.

Mary Sewall wrote a a series of children’s books with evangelical themes, and Anna helped edit them. She also worked with her mother on other social issues including abolition and temperance. Anna’s mother had long been a guiding force in her life. One of Mrs. Sewell’s books was Talks with Mamma, a collection of motherly advice she shared with Anna and her brother, Philip.

The family moved to Lancing in 1845. Anna’s health didn’t improve, so she travelled to Europe to continue to seek treatment. When she returned, she continued to follow her parents from one place to another, including Wick and Bath.

Quotes from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Black Beauty

Having become dependent on horse-drawn carriages to get around, Anna developed an empathy for horses. She grew to love them and cared deeply about their treatment, as well as that of all of animals. The inhumane treatment of horses she observed inspired her to write Black Beauty. She worked it between the years of 1871 and 1877, already in her fifties. By then she was in such poor health that she was hardly able to leave her bed. She had such difficulty writing that she was compelled to dictate it to her mother.

Anna hadn’t intended Black Beauty as a children’s book; rather, she wrote it for those who owned or worked with horses, “to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment …” The story especially denounced the use of the bearing-rein and was warmly recommended by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Going beyond its original purpose, the book also conveyed practical insight into humane training practices for colts, stable management, and animal husbandry. A unique feature of the story is that it’s told from the horse’s perspective; it was originally subtitled The Autobiography of a Horse. It begins in a charming fashion:

The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. Over the hedge on one side we looked into a plowed field, and on the other we looked over a gate at our master’s house, which stood by the roadside; at the top of the meadow was a grove of fir trees, and at the bottom a running brook overhung by a steep bank.

While I was young I lived upon my mother’s milk, as I could not eat grass. In the daytime I ran by her side, and at night I lay down close by her. When it was hot we used to stand by the pond in the shade of the trees, and when it was cold we had a nice warm shed near the grove.

Black Beauty is now considered a children’s classic, and as such, it long remained one of the top ten bestselling children’s books of all time. Millions of copies have been sold, and it has been translated into a multitude of languages.

The book was published when she was 57 years old, in 1877. In the last year of her life, she was completely bedridden and often in extreme pain. Anna Sewell died five months after the publication of Black Beauty, either of hepatitis or phthisis. She was able, at least, to see the warm reception of her only book in the first few months after publication in England.

Black Beauty on Amazon

Black Beauty in America

Black Beauty was published in America in 1890, and as it did in its native land, received much attention and laudatory reviews. At a time when horses were still very much depended on for transportation and labor, this deceptively simple tale served to create greater empathy for the beautiful animals. An August, 1890 article in an Indiana newspaper was typical in its praise:

“Since the recent publication of the work by Anna Sewall, entitled Black Beauty, attention has been called more and more to the cruelties practiced on the horse, man’s most faithful and useful servant. We require use of this animal more than of any other, and either from want of though or ignorance we forget that the horse is a very fine and delicate animal, sensitive as man to pain and hardships and almost human in its sense of hearing and understanding.

A horse lacks words with which to express its feelings, but who shall say it lacks a sense of man’s cruelty when he urges it beyond its utmost strength with blows and curses.”

Many other reviews, similarly, saw through a horse’s eyes and got under its skin, so to speak, for the first time. Another 1890 review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle states that Anna’s first mention of writing the book was in a note to a friend in 1871, and that “her love of animals was so great that they seemed to understand her every word. When driving her father’s horses she guided them more by talking to them than by the use of the reins, addressed them by the Quaker ‘thou’ and ‘thee,’ just as she did in conversation with people.”

Anna Sewell in 1840, at about age 10

More about Anna Sewell on this site

Quotes from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Major Works

Black Beauty  (1877)

Biographies 

Dark Horse: A Life of Anna Sewell  by Adrienne E. Gavin
Anna Sewell: The Woman Who Wrote Black Beauty  by Susan Chitty

More Information

Anna Sewell on Wikipedia
Reader discussion of Black Beauty on Goodreads

Articles, News, Etc.

Black Beauty Author Anna Sewell Letters Discovered

Read and listen online

Black Beauty on Project Gutenberg
Audio of Black Beauty on Librivox

Visit

The Anna Sewell Birthplace and Childhood Home –

Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England

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Willa Cather’s Inspiration for The Song of the Lark, Olive Fremstad

The Song of the Lark is a 1915 novel by Willa Cather, telling the story of Thea Kronborg and her desire to be a world-class singer. Born into the family of a Swedish Methodist minister in a Colorado village, she has a voice, an ambition, and a native sense of the true and fine — qualities all in contrast with the cheapness and tawdriness she perceives around her.

From her girlhood, when her ambition takes hold, to her triumph as a prima donna at thirty, Thea’s whole life is focused around her supreme desire for artistic perfection. Willa Cather had already outlined this novel, having had an interest in opera. Fortuitously, she crossed paths with the real-life opera singer Olive Fremstad during this time, which helped her make Thea Kronborg an even more vivid character. The following excerpt is from Willa: The Life of Willa Cather by Phyllis C. Robinson, © 1983:

Discovering Olive Fremstad

Sometime during the winter of 1913 a new enthusiasm entered Willa’s life. She had been assigned an article for McClure’s [magazine] on three American opera singers, Louise Homer, Geraldine Farrar, and Olive Fremstad. She enjoyed the interviews with Homer and Farrar but it was Fremstad who excited her imagination. To find a new kind of human creature, to get inside a new skin was like discovering a new country, only even more exhilarating.

Fremstad’s colleagues may have found the singer overbearing and difficult to get along with —she was famous for insisting on being paid in cash before each performance at the Metropolitan — but Willa declined to be put off by Fremstad’s temperament.

Olive Fremstad (1871 – 1951)

What she discerned in the dramatic soprano from Minnesota who had been born in Stockholm were the very qualities she had first seen in the fearless women she admired on the Divide. To Willa, Fremstad was like those pioneers, suspicious, defiant, far-seeing. Her physical presence alone might have been intimidating. Unpolished and untamed, she had a way of sweeping things before her, of dismissing people and objects that bored her.

The fierce concentration when she was working took all the energy she possessed and she had no interest in anything but music except when she was at her home in Maine. Then she cooked and gardened and chopped wood like the farm woman Willa always said she was.

Willa already had the outline of her next book in mind when she and Fremstad met. She had long planned to write about an opera singer and now she studied Fremstad, trying to discover what it was that transformed the stolid Swede into an artist. In her personal life Fremstad was intelligent but unimaginative … and yet she was a woman of supreme musical gifts, a brilliant Kundry, a magnificent Isolde, and an unforgettable Elizabeth. Willa and Edith Lewis went to the Metropolitan opera again and again to hear her sing.

Song of the Lark by Willa Cather on Amazon

A surprising performance

One performance in particular made a lasting impression on Willa. It was the day on which she went to interview Fremstad for the first time. Appearing at the appointment at four-thirty, she found the singer arriving late from a motor trip. Fremstad was exhausted, barely able to speak above a whisper, and so pale and wan she looked like an old woman.

Feeling sorry for the poor soul, Willa suggested it might be better to postpone the interview. Fremstad did not argue and Willa left the apartment, in time to join Edith and Isabelle McClung, who was visiting, at the opera for a performance of Tales of Hoffman. Before the second act began the manager came out with the announcement that the soprano had been taken ill but that Mme. Olive Fremstad had consented to sing in her place. Edith Lewis described the experience:

“The curtain went up — and there, before our astonished eyes, was Fremstad — whom Willa had left only an hour before — now a vision of dazzling youth and beauty. She sang that night in a voice so opulent, so effortless, that it seemed as if she were dreaming the music, not singing it. ‘But it’s impossible,’ Willa Cather kept saying. ‘It’s impossible.’”

Another time Willa saw Fremstad just after a performance as she was getting into her car. Willa was about to greet her but something stopped her and she merely bowed to Fremstad’s secretary. The singer’s eyes were empty glass, said Willa; she had simply spent her charge. Her personality renewed itself each night upon the stage, but the experience was draining, and when the curtain fell she could not sustain the illusion that she had created.

Willa was to use that strange duality of the creative artist which she observed in Fremstad in the heroine of The Song of the Lark, Thea Kronborg. (— Phyllis C. Robinson)

Olive Fremstad as Carmen

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Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn (December 14, 1640 –April 16, 1689) was a playwright, poet, and novelist known for being the first British woman to earn her living by her writing. She born in Wye, Kent, England. As a child, she was taken to Surinam (presumably by her parents), then an English possession.

While there, Aphra discovered the legend of the African prince Oroonoko and his beloved Imoinda. This later inspired what became her best-known novel, Oroonoko. She also has the distinction of being the first British woman to earn her living by her writing.

A return to England

Aphra returned to England some time between 1658 and 1664, having come of age. Shortly after her supposed return to England from Surinam, Behn may have married Johan (also written as Johann or John) Behn. Very little is known about him, other than that he was German or Dutch and possibly a merchant The marriage was brief, though it’s unknown whether it was due to widowhood or separation, but Aphra continued to use “Mrs Behn” as her professional name.

Aphra’s wit and charm somehow brought her into the court of Charles II, and the king sent her on secret service as a political spy in Antwerp during the second Anglo-Dutch war. She used the code name Astrea, which she later used as a nom de plume for some of her writings. Though she successfully accomplished the objects of her mission, legend had it that she was never paid for her spy services. Returning to England penniless, it’s often reported that she went to debtors’ prison, though this part of the story may or may not be true.

A prolific dramatist

Her history came into sharper focus and was verifiable by fact when she started her career as a writer. She’d had her fill of politics (though she continued to criticized the whigs). From the 1670s to the 1680s, she was one of the most prolific playwrights in Britain. It was from this time onward that she supported herself by her writings. Among her plays were The Forced Marriage, or the Jealous Bridegroom (1671); The Amorous Prince (1671); The Town Fop (1677); and The Rover, or the Banished Cavalier (in two parts, 1677 and 1681), The Debauchee, (1677), The Counterfeit Bridegroom, (1677), and The Roundheads (1682).

The Rover (1677) was arguably her most successful play, and remains one of her best known. King Charles II’s mistress, Nell Gwyn was a famous actress who came out of retirement to play the role of the whore, Angelica Bianca.  

Behn was severely criticized by some for writing in a “coarse” or “masculine” style, which is to say that she included themes of sexual desire in her works. Occasionally, she wrote of love between women. Her work was considered risqué, even shocking and scandalous. On the other hand, she had many supporters and admirers of her work, including esteemed male authors of her time. 

Aphra was immensely prolific, creating and staging nineteen plays, contributed to others, and became the first renowned female dramatist in Britain. Her dramas showed a thorough comprehension of stagecraft, and her wit always shone through.

One of Aphra’s last plays, Like Father, Like Son (1682) was such a flop that it wasn’t preserved in print, as were many of her other  plays. The merging of the theatre companies for which she wrote made the writing of plays less profitable for her, and though she wrote a small number of plays after this one, she focused more on other forms of writing.

Aphra Behn page on Amazon

Poetry and prose

Though Aphra became renowned for her dramatic work, in her heart, she wished to be remembered as a poet. Like her plays, her poetry spoke of love, longing, and sexual themes. One of her best known is “The Disappointment,” a description of a sexual encounter from a woman’s perspective. The “disappointment” in the poem has often been interpreted as alluding to male impotence.

Aphra’s first collection of poetry, Poems Upon Several Occasions, was published in 1684. That same year, Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister was published, becoming an early example of the epistolary novel, that is, one told entirely in letters. These two 1864 books were quite successful, quickly going through several printings. Love Letters was spun into two sequels:  Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, Second Part (1685), and The Amours of Philander and Silvia (1687).

In 1688 Oroonoko was published. The story of a noble slave and his tragic love, as mentioned earlier, may have been based on legends Aphra heard during her youth in Surinam. Notably, it was the first English novel to express empathy for slaves. Like the works that came just before it, Oroonoko was quite successful, and was adapted for the stage in 1695 (though the author by then had been dead for several years). It continues to be her best known work.

Later years

Despite the success of her novels and poetry, Aphra Behn’s last years brought her ill health and debt. She had difficulty using her hands, but continued to write until the end, and was a celebrated literary figure.

She died on April 1689 at 48 years of age, and is buried in the East Cloister of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on her tombstone reads: “Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality.” She was quoted as stating that she had led a “life dedicated to pleasure and poetry.”

She is considered a highly influential dramatist of the Restoration era, and her prose work has been important to the development of English fiction that came after. She also did a substantial amount of work as a translator, mostly into French.

Aphra Behn not only broke new ground as a woman author who lived by her pen and didn’t limit the scope of her subject matter. She became a literary role model for many generations of women authors who came after her, and as such, inspired these lines by Virginia Woolf:

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon

the tomb of Aphra Behn, … for it was she who earned

them the right to speak their minds.

Major Works

Aphra Behn’s output was immense. This is a small selection of some of her best-known and preserved works.

The Forc’d Marriage (1670)
The Amorous Prince (1671)
The Dutch Lover (1673)
The Town Fop (1676)
The Rover, Part 1 (1677) and Part 2 (1681)
Sir Patient Fancy (1678)
The Feigned Courtesans (1679)
The Roundheads (1681)
The City Heiress (1682)
Like Father, Like Son (1682)
The Emperor of the Moon (1687)

Novels

The Fair Jilt
Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
Oroonoko

Poetry collections

Poems upon Several Occasions, with A Voyage to the Island of Love (1684)
Lycidus; or, The Lover in Fashion (1688)

More information

Wikipedia
Biography of Aphra Behn on Luminarium
Poetry Foundation
Behn on Writers Inspire
Reader discussion on Goodreads

Biographies

Aphra Behn: A Secret Life by Janet Todd (2017)
Aphra Behn: The English Sappho by George Woodcock (1996)

Read and listen online

Aphra Behn’s works on Project Gutenberg
Audio versions on Librivox

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To Be Young, Gifted and Black by Lorraine Hansberry (1969)

To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in her Own Words is a 1969 collection of autobiographical writings by the playwright and author best known for A Raisin in the Sun. It was the first play to be written by an African-American woman to be staged on Broadway.

Lorraine Hansberry‘s ex-husband and friend, the songwriter and poet Robert Nemiroff, became her literary executor after her death in 1965. He gathered her unpublished writings and first adapted them into a stage play of the same name, which ran off Broadway from 1968 to 1969. The acclaimed play was one of the most successful of that season. It continues to be performed around the world.

In 1969, the collection of autobiographical writings by Hansberry that formed the basis of the play — letters, journals, and interviews — were gathered and published as a book of the same title. It takes the reader from Hansberry’s early life in a Chicago ghetto, though her college days, and beyond into the creation of A Raisin in the Sun, which she wrote while still in her twenties. It also touches on her marriage, her commitment to race and gender issues, and ends with her battle with terminal cancer. When she died, she was only thirty-four.

This 1969 review of To Be Young, Gifted and Black presents a typically laudatory view of not only the book, but of the talented woman behind the words.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black

Original review by Gordon Young of To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words, adapted by Robert Nemiroff (Fresno Bee, December 28, 1969): Lorraine Hansberry is best known for her play, A Raisin in the Sun, about a Southside Chicago black family’s decision to move to a white suburb.

The play opened on Broadway in 1959 to critical acclaim and later was made into an award-winning movie starring  Sidney Poitier. A second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, closed in 1965 on the day that Miss Hansberry died of cancer at age thirty-four.

A life cut short, a body of work unfulfilled

At the time of her death, Miss Hansberry was working on other dramas and had left behind a sizable body of reviews, letters, and speeches which form the basis of this book. Among her manuscripts was a play titled Les Blancs [produced on Broadway in 1970]. A second forthcoming volume will contain three shorter plays.

In addition, this book is an expansion of the script of a play by the same title which was staged in New York shortly before its publication and enjoyed a successful run. Clearly, Lorraine Hansberry deserves recognition for more than A Raisin in the Sun.

Robert Nemiroff’s role

The task of marshaling that recognition has been taken up by her husband and literary executor, Robert Nemiroff, who adapted the material in this book. In the foreword he explains that he came across this undated note among her papers:

“If anything should happen — before ’tis done — may I trust that all commas and periods will be placed and someone will complete my thoughts.”

Nemiroff has placed the commas and periods with skill and taste. What emerges is a portrait of the artist as a young woman starting with a middle-class childhood in Chicago through two years at the University of Wisconsin and then on to Greenwich Village where, after the success of “Raisin,” and before her death, Miss Hansberry worked on her other writing and became increasingly associated with the civil rights movement of the early 1960s.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black on Amazon

An advocate for her race

She was an eloquent spokesperson for her race. She didn’t attempt to disassociate herself from being black. A well-meaning critic once described her as “a writer who happens to be a Negro.” But Miss Hansberry scoffed at such comments since the characters in her plays reflected the crucial dilemma of being both inescapably black while striving to attempt full status as human beings.

She was convinced that slavery had so eroded the dignity of African-American that no amount of white, liberal patronizing would ever effect a lasting improvement until black people achieved their own renaissance. Some of her more ideological essays and reviews are prophetic of what has developed as a separatist, militant movement.

The universality of Hansberry’s writing

Nevertheless, there remains a universality about much of her writing. There was no existential revelation that life contains the seeds of tragedy — she had known that all along.

On the other hand, her writing does not dips the cynicism and hopelessness so common in theater of her time. There is anger in her plays, but it is justified, specifically human, and directed not at hating but at affirming the ties that bind. Her style is compassionate, restrained, and finely honed, which makes it ever more impactful.

Early in her career, Miss Hansberry summarized her credo: “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, sine I have known all these things I have found them reason enough — and I wish to live.”

In the summer of 1964, Miss Hansberry wrote in her journal, “I think when I get my health back I shall go into the South to find out what kind of revolutionary I am.”

She never did, of course, but this book and her plays will make readers want to test the depth of their own commitment to the principles of humanism and understanding of which Lorraine Hansberry was such a brief but brilliant example.

You might also like: Quotes by Lorraine Hansberry

More about To Be Young, Gifted and Black by Lorraine Hansberry

Reader discussion on Goodreads
Wikipedia (play)
Reader’s Guide at Random House
To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1972 made-for-TV film)

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Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1912)

“Renascence” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) is the 1912 poem that put this iconic American poet on the literary map. Though it was published when she was just nineteen, it held up as one of the best poems in her canon. You can find an excellent analysis of it on Poetry Foundation.

The 214-line lyric poem consists of rhymed couplets. The overarching theme is the connection of the individual to nature. The narrator of the poem is writing from a mountaintop from which she observes the broad vista. Observation turn into a mystical experience. The poem was written on the summit of Mt. Battle in Camden, Maine, which now has a plaque in the spot that inspired it.

The poem considers human suffering and death, and after a refreshing rain, the narrator is once again able to experience joy, the rebirth of life — thus the title, “Renascence.”

The backstory of the poem’s publication sets the stage for what would be an eventful and dramatic life. Edna has already been writing — and even publishing — poetry while in her teens. Her mother encouraged her to enter the poem in a contest sponsored by The Lyric Year, an annual volume of poetry. It was accepted and included in the collection.

You might also like: Quotes by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Renascence” was considered the finest poem in the collection, but ultimately won only fourth place. This resulted in quite a bit of controversy. Even the first and second prize winners felt that Edna’s poem should have won; the runner-up even offered Edna his prize money. The attendant publicity did serve to bring Edna quite a bit of publicity, bringing her and her work to the attention of editors and publishers.

After the publication of The Lyric Year, Edna was reading this poem and playing piano at Whitehall Inn in Camden Maine. One of the audience members was Caroline B. Dow, a wealthy arts patron who offered to fund her education at Vassar College.

Renascence

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I’d started from;

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see;

These were the things that bounded me;

And I could touch them with my hand,

Almost, I thought, from where I stand.

And all at once things seemed so small

My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;

Miles and miles above my head;

So here upon my back I’ll lie

And look my fill into the sky.

And so I looked, and, after all,

The sky was not so very tall.

The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,

And—sure enough!—I see the top!

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

I ‘most could touch it with my hand!

And reaching up my hand to try,

I screamed to feel it touch the sky. 

I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity

Came down and settled over me;

Forced back my scream into my chest,

Bent back my arm upon my breast,

And, pressing of the Undefined

The definition on my mind,

Held up before my eyes a glass

Through which my shrinking sight did pass

Until it seemed I must behold

Immensity made manifold;

Whispered to me a word whose sound

Deafened the air for worlds around,

And brought unmuffled to my ears

The gossiping of friendly spheres,

The creaking of the tented sky,

The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard, and knew at last

The How and Why of all things, past,

And present, and forevermore.

The Universe, cleft to the core,

Lay open to my probing sense

That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence

But could not,—nay! But needs must suck

At the great wound, and could not pluck

My lips away till I had drawn

All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!

For my omniscience paid I toll

In infinite remorse of soul.

All sin was of my sinning, all

Atoning mine, and mine the gall

Of all regret. Mine was the weight

Of every brooded wrong, the hate

That stood behind each envious thrust,

Mine every greed, mine every lust.

And all the while for every grief,

Each suffering, I craved relief

With individual desire,—

Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire

About a thousand people crawl;

Perished with each,—then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;

He moved his eyes and looked at me;

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,

And knew his hunger as my own.

I saw at sea a great fog bank

Between two ships that struck and sank;

A thousand screams the heavens smote;

And every scream tore through my throat.

No hurt I did not feel, no death

That was not mine; mine each last breath

That, crying, met an answering cry

From the compassion that was I.

All suffering mine, and mine its rod;

Mine, pity like the pity of God. 

Ah, awful weight! Infinity

Pressed down upon the finite Me!

My anguished spirit, like a bird,

Beating against my lips I heard;

Yet lay the weight so close about

There was no room for it without.

And so beneath the weight lay I

And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,

When quietly the earth beneath

Gave way, and inch by inch, so great

At last had grown the crushing weight,

Into the earth I sank till I

Full six feet under ground did lie,

And sank no more,—there is no weight

Can follow here, however great.

From off my breast I felt it roll,

And as it went my tortured soul

Burst forth and fled in such a gust

That all about me swirled the dust. 

Deep in the earth I rested now;

Cool is its hand upon the brow

And soft its breast beneath the head

Of one who is so gladly dead.

And all at once, and over all

The pitying rain began to fall;

I lay and heard each pattering hoof

Upon my lowly, thatched roof,

And seemed to love the sound far more

Than ever I had done before.

For rain it hath a friendly sound

To one who’s six feet underground;

And scarce the friendly voice or face:

A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come

And speak to me in my new home.

I would I were alive again

To kiss the fingers of the rain,

To drink into my eyes the shine

Of every slanting silver line,

To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze

From drenched and dripping apple-trees.

For soon the shower will be done,

And then the broad face of the sun

Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth

Until the world with answering mirth

Shakes joyously, and each round drop

Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. 

How can I bear it; buried here,

While overhead the sky grows clear

And blue again after the storm?

O, multi-colored, multiform,

Beloved beauty over me,

That I shall never, never see

Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,

That I shall never more behold!

Sleeping your myriad magics through,

Close-sepulchred away from you!

O God, I cried, give me new birth,

And put me back upon the earth!

Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd

And let the heavy rain, down-poured

In one big torrent, set me free,

Washing my grave away from me! 

I ceased; and through the breathless hush

That answered me, the far-off rush

Of herald wings came whispering

Like music down the vibrant string

Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!

Before the wild wind’s whistling lash

The startled storm-clouds reared on high

And plunged in terror down the sky,

And the big rain in one black wave

Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be;

I only know there came to me

A fragrance such as never clings

To aught save happy living things;

A sound as of some joyous elf

Singing sweet songs to please himself,

And, through and over everything,

A sense of glad awakening.

The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,

Whispering to me I could hear;

I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips

Brushed tenderly across my lips,

Laid gently on my sealed sight,

And all at once the heavy night

Fell from my eyes and I could see,—

A drenched and dripping apple-tree,

A last long line of silver rain,

A sky grown clear and blue again.

And as I looked a quickening gust

Of wind blew up to me and thrust

Into my face a miracle

Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—

I know not how such things can be!—

I breathed my soul back into me.

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I

And hailed the earth with such a cry

As is not heard save from a man

Who has been dead, and lives again.

About the trees my arms I wound;

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;

I raised my quivering arms on high;

I laughed and laughed into the sky,

Till at my throat a strangling sob

Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb

Sent instant tears into my eyes;

O God, I cried, no dark disguise

Can e’er hereafter hide from me

Thy radiant identity! 

Thou canst not move across the grass

But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,

Nor speak, however silently,

But my hushed voice will answer Thee.

I know the path that tells Thy way

Through the cool eve of every day;

God, I can push the grass apart

And lay my finger on Thy heart! 

The world stands out on either side

No wider than the heart is wide;

Above the world is stretched the sky,—

No higher than the soul is high.

The heart can push the sea and land

Farther away on either hand;

The soul can split the sky in two,

And let the face of God shine through.

But East and West will pinch the heart

That can not keep them pushed apart;

And he whose soul is flat—the sky

Will cave in on him by and by. 

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Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953) born in Washington D.C., began writing as a child. Her best known work is The Yearling, the story of a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was subsequently made into a successful movie.

She’s also known for her writings about her adopted home in Cross Creek, Florida, where she bought an orange grove in the late 1920s and lived for many decades. She was fascinated by the people and local culture, and gathered her observations into a memoir, Cross Creek, and a compilation of recipes, Cross Creek Cookery, both published in 1942. Writing was her passion, something she did since childhood, but she often found it a torment:

“Writing is agony. I stay at my typewriter for eight hours every day when I’m working and keep as free as possible from all distractions for the rest of the day. I aim to do six pages a day but I’m satisfied with three. Often there are only a few lines to show.”

Early life

Marjorie’s father was an attorney for the U.S. Patent Office. Growing up outside Washington, D.C., the family lived on a farm. There, and in the nearby hills of Maryland and Virginia, Marjorie acquired the love of nature that would later permeate her writings. She began to sell stories under the name “Felicity” at age 11. As a teen, she had sketches and stories published in newspapers, and in 1912 won a McCalls writing contest for her piece “The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty.”

Marjorie attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, pursuing a degree in English. She graduated in 1918, and one year later married her college sweetheart, Charles Rawlings who she described as a “big blond newspaperman who grew up on Lake Ontario and wrote about yachting.”

The two moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and both wrote for the Louisville Courier-Journal. The couple soon moved to Charles’ hometown, Rochester, New York, and they both began writing for the Rochester Journal. Rawlings had her own column at the paper, titled “Songs of the Housewife.”

While supporting herself through newspaper work she attempted to write fiction for magazines. Mostly, she collected rejections:

“I tried to write what I thought they [popular magazines] would be most likely to buy and all that brought me was rejection slips. Then in 1928 I had an opportunity to buy an orange grove in Florida and I bought it, left the newspaper and settled down to give all my time to fiction. Still the stories didn’t sell, so I gave up … But then I thought—just one more. An I wrote a story that seemed far from ‘commercial,’ that—it seemed to me—no editor would want to buy but that had meaning for me. It sold like a shot and I’ve had no trouble selling since, though I never have tried to write ‘commercially.’”

See also: Quotes by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Cross Creek

In 1926, Marjorie and Charles visited his brother in the northern part of Florida, and there she had an epiphany. While out on a hunting trip, she became a bit lost, and it was a metaphor for her life.

“Sitting on a log, my gunshots unanswered, trying to think of my directions, with no life, no movement anywhere, no sound but the single note of a thrush, I became conscious of a peace, an isolation, and strangely, a safety beyond any previous experience.”

Two years later, after receiving a modest inheritance from her mother, Rawlings and her husband moved to Florida and purchased a 72-acre orange grove and farm in the north Florida hamlet of Cross Creek. She described it as “remote land of fertile hummock and unfenced pasture and ancient wood and orange grove, four miles from the nearest village.

It was during her time in Cross Creek that Rawlings would finally find herself as the writer she longed to be, but as the couple was making the move, she despaired:

“I had tried to write on the job but could not. When I came here I put all thought of popular writing behind me. I was determined to try to interpret the people I had come to love. If I failed, I would write no more.”

The orange grove was intended to support her writing, but that was a tall order. There were all sorts of challenges: Mosquitos, drunken farm hands, frosts that ruined the orange crops, termites, and wayward farm animals.

Success and upheaval

Marjorie was attracted to the eccentric locals of Cross Creek, but they were wary and at first resisted her eager questions and interest. Eventually they warmed to her, and she began recording detailed descriptions of the people, their dialect, the flora and fauna, and recipes. In 1931, after years of rejection, Scribner’s Magazine published two of her short stories, clearly inspired by Cross Creek and its residents. The pieces, “Cracker Chidlings” and “Jacob’s Ladder” were poorly received by the locals.

The year 1933 brought both success and pain for the rising author. Rawlings’ first novel, South Moon Under, was published and well received, validating her pursuit in writing about rural Florida life. It was chosen for the Book-of-the-Month Club selection and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

The recognition and income from the novel’s success brought about an opposite reaction from her husband; he grew jealous and began criticizing her work, eventually moving out. He was also sick of the rough existence on the orange grove. She filed for divorce in 1933.

After her divorce, Rawlings punged into fiction writing. She immersed herself in her surroundings, embarking on a boat trip with a friend down the Florida St. Johns River. The trip recharged Rawlings and fueled her with new ideas and inspiration for her writing. By now, it was her writing that was supporting the orange grove, rather than the other way around.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ page on Amazon

The Yearling & Cross Creek

Perhaps recognized as Rawlings’ best-known piece of fiction, The Yearling was published in 1938. It tells the tale of a young Florida boy, Jody, and his pet deer, who he is forced to shoot after it’s caught eating his family’s crops. The Yearling was an instant bestseller and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1939.

The Yearling might now be seen as a “young adult” novel, though at the time, this wasn’t yet its own genre; yet it’s a book for all ages. The story can be read on its own merit, or seen as a parable.

In 1941, Rawlings was remarried to Norton Baskin. A year later, she published Cross Creek. In addition to the regular and book club editions, it was released in a special armed forces edition to be sent to servicemen during World War II. An autobiographical account of her relationships with her Floridian neighbors, it was followed by Cross Creek Cookery (1942). She loved to cook and entertain, finding the process a lot less painful than writing, which she sometimes described as “agony.”

In 1943, Rawlings faced a libel suit surrounding Cross Creek. It was filed by her neighbor, who felt that Rawling had insulted the family that “Jacob’s Ladder” was allegedly inspired by. Rawlings eventually won the case and enjoyed a brief moment of satisfaction, but the verdict was overturned in appellate court and she was ordered to pay damages in the amount of $1. Other than Cross Creek Cookery, no other sequel would ever be published, due to the drama surrounding the lawsuit.

You might also like: Culinary Widsom from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

A cook at heart

Cross Creek Cookery was published in 1942, right on the heels of Cross Creek. A collection of recipes and lore reflecting the cuisine of her adopted home, some of its offerings aren’t for the feint of heart or the vegetarian-inclined. It includes recipes like ‘possum pie, alligator-tail steak, and turtle meat and eggs. Marjorie sometimes found writing a painful and laborious process, but she adored cooking.

“Food imaginatively and lovingly prepared, and eaten in good company, warms the being with something more than the mere intake of calories. I cannot conceive of cooking for friends or family, under reasonable conditions, as being a chore.”

She loved holding forth with her kitchen and entertaining tips, and you can glean some of them in her inimitable forthright style in Culinary Wisdom from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Prominent friendships

Aside from a friendship with the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, Rawlings had friendships with fellow writers Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Mitchell, and Zora Neale Hurston. Second husband Norton Baskin later wrote of her,

“Marjorie was the shyest person I have ever known. This was always strange to me, as she could stand up to anybody in any department of endeavor, but time  after  time, when she was asked to go some place or to do something, she would accept only if I would go with her.”

Final novel & films

Rawlings’ last novel, The Sojourner, was published just before her death in 1953. Set in Michigan, this character study of a man and his relationship with his family was well received. Her last years were spent in a town just south of St. Augustine, Florida, where her husband owned a restaurant, but she left her heart in Cross Creek and its orange groves. As she wrote, she had merely been a tenant in a land owned by the redbirds and whippoorwills and blue jays.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings died on December 14, 1953. She donated most of her manuscripts to the University of Florida at Gainesville, where she had briefly taught a creative writing course.

Rawlings’ Cross Creek house and farm yard were listed in the National Registry of Historic Places in1970, Today the property is designated as The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park. 

In 1983, Cross Creek was adapted into a film starring Mary Steenburgen. The Yearling, first made into a film in 1946, was remade into a TV film in 1994.

More about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on this site

A Talk with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1941)
Culinary Wisdom from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Dear Literary Ladies: Does one need connections to get published?

Major works

South Moon Under
The Yearling
The Secret River
Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Cross Creek 


Cross Creek Cookery
The Sojourner

Biographies about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 
Frontier Eden: The Literary Career of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

by Gordon E. Bigelow
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Sojourner at Cross Creek

by Elizabeth Silverthorne

More information

Wikipedia
Reader discussions of Rawlings’ books on Goodreads

Visit Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s home

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

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P.L. Travers

P.L. (Pamela Lyndon) Travers (August 9, 1899 – April 23, 1996) had a vivid imagination even as a child, inspired by her love of reading — fairy tales included. She’s best remembered for the Mary Poppins series of books.

Mary Poppins, one of the best-loved characters in children’s literature, came from a little story she made up while babysitting two young children. It first became a book, then a series, and the basis of the renowned 1964 Disney musical film, which greatly displeased the author. Travers wrote other children’s books, as well as books for adults, many focused on mythology.

Early life

Born Helen Lyndon Goff in Queensland, Australia, her mother was Margaret Agnes Morehead, the sister of the Premier of Queensland. Her father, Travers Goff, was an alcoholic and unsuccessful bank manager. He died when Helen was 7.

Nicknamed as Lyndon during her childhood, she moved with her sisters and mother to New South Wales in Australia after her father’s death. They were financially supported by her great aunt, who later become the inspiration for her book Aunt Sass.

Childhood woven by fairy tales

Ever the imaginative child, Travers loved fairy tales and animals, in particular birds; she often referred to herself as a hen. She had a love of Irish mythology, said to have stemmed from the stories her father told her when she was a child. During her teen years, her writing talents took flight, and eventually her poetry was published in Australian periodicals.

In the early 1920s, she was published in the literary magazine The Bulletin. It was during this time she adopted the stage name Pamela and gained a reputation as a dancer and Shakespearean actress, supporting herself as a journalist. She toured Australia and New Zealand with Allan Wilkie‘s Shakespearean Company. In 1924, she left to pursue her literary passions in England, having little support from her family to pursue a career in acting.

Her voyage to England gave her the inspiration for a series of several travel articles that she sold to Australian publications, boosting her finances to continue her pursuit as a writer.

In 1931, she and her friend Madge Burnand (playwright and the former editor of Punch, a satirical British magazine) moved from their shared flat in London to a cottage in Sussex. This is where she began to write her legacy, Mary Poppins. 

P.L. Travers as Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1924

Literary career launched in England

England embraced Travers, and she began publishing articles in various papers, including poems in The Irish Statesman. The editor George William Russell, pseudonymously known as AE, took a keen interest in Travers’ writing and a friendship quickly developed.

Through her connection to Russell, she became friends with poet William Butler Yeats and studied mythology with G.I. Gurdjieff.

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins was published in 1934 to instant success. The book kicked off a successful series with the magical nanny as the central character. In the first book, she’s blown to Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, London by the by the East wind, and becomes part of the Banks family’s household to take care of the children. If your idea of Mary Poppins comes from how Julie Andrews portrayed her in the 1964 film, you’d be in for a surprise if you haven’t read the books. She a much darker and peppery character. Here’s how she’s described in a Classic of the Month column in the Guardian:

“Mary Poppins is not nice. She arrives, to be the nanny for the four Banks children, riding a puff of wind; she understands, and can be understood by, animals; she can take you round the world in about two minutes; and the medicine she gives you will taste like whatever your heart desires (lime-juice cordial for Jane Banks; milk for the infant Banks twins) – but a spoonful of sugar, to quote the very sugary movie, is nowhere in sight.

Mary Poppins may grant your fondest wishes, but her manner is entirely medicinal … All disapproving incomprehension, she refuses to acknowledge the magic for which she seems to be responsible — leaving the possibility wide open that the collection of more or less unconnected adventures the children have with this otherwise prosaic working-class nanny, who likes nothing better than to gaze at her reflection and admire her new gloves or hat, are nothing more than the wish fulfillment fantasies of overactive juvenile imaginations.”

The next book in the series, Mary Poppins Comes Back, came out the following year (1935), but then there would be an 8-year gap before the next, Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943). This was followed by Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), Mary Poppins From A to Z (1962), Mary Poppins in the Kitchen (1975), Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982), and finally, Mary Poppins and the House Next Door (1988).

Fearing she wouldn’t be taken seriously as an author, despite the success of her Mary Poppins books, she wrote young adult novels, a play, as well as essays and lectures on mythology. In 1966, already after the highly successful Disney film was produced, she remained busy, serving as a writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College and Smith College.

In 1977, Travers was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

See also: Quote by P.L. Travers

Disagreements with Disney

In 1964, Mary Poppins was produced into a Disney film. In 2013, the film Saving Mr. Banks starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks was created to tell the story of the making of Mary Poppins and the fraught relationship between Travers and Walt Disney. Here’s an excerpt from a Smithsonian Magazine article on how this “based on a true story” might have been slightly sugar-coated:

“The new movie proclaims it is ‘based on a true story,’ a cheery phrase that cleverly balances truth-telling and let’s-pretend. Saving Mr. Banks is not a documentary, but a highly entertaining feature film loosely based on the deeply antagonistic collaboration between two very strong-willed artists.”

Travers was skeptical when she was first approached by Disney in 1945. She resisted for many years, demanding the film be live action and not animated. In 1959, she finally agreed to sell the rights to Mary Poppins. But even after serving as a consultant during the production period, she was quite dissatisfied with the final film. Still, Saving Mr. Banks is an entertaining film, though it’s been said that in real life, Travers was even more of a pill than the portrayal by Emma Thompson.

P.L. Travers page on Amazon

Idle time is food for the devil

Never one to rest on her laurels, she stayed busy until the end of her life. She had plans to write Goodbye, Mary Poppins, but withdrew the proposal after an outcry from both her children audience and publishers.

Travers never married, but adopted a son, Camillus, in 1939. He was one of twin Irish boys.

She died in London at age 96 in 1996, due to complications from an epileptic seizure. 

More about P.L. Travers on this site

Quotes by P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins

Major Works

Mary Poppins  (1934)
Mary Poppins Comes Back  (1935)
Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943)
Mary Poppins in the Park  (1952)
Mary Poppins from A to Z (1962)
Mary Poppins in the Kitchen (1975)
Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982)
Mary Poppins and the House Next Door (1988)
What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth

Biographies about P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers by Valerie Lawson
A Lively Oracle: A Centennial Celebration of P.L. Travers by Ellen Dooling Draper

More Information

P.L. Travers on Wikipedia  
P.L. Travers page on Amazon
Reader discussion of P.L. Travers works on Goodreads

Film adaptation

Mary Poppins (1964)

Visit and research

Birthplace of P.L. Travers and Mary Poppins Festival  – Maryborough, Australia

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A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett (1884)

A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett is an 1884 novel by this American author noted for regional fiction set in Maine. Nan, the main character, is a young woman wants to become a doctor, something that was quite out of the ordinary at the time this novel was published.

The story follows a central character in a narrative, unlike the linked sketches in her best-known book, The Country of the Pointed Firs. But like those linked stories, it’s more episodic than plot-driven.

Jewett was inspired by her own father, who was indeed a country doctor. In her formative years, she learned about human nature by accompanying her father as he did his calls to neighboring farms and villages in South Berwick, Maine. The following review came out as the book was published in 1884, and gives a contemporaneous view of the story about a woman with the ambition to become a doctor: 

Longing for a larger, freer life

From the original review in The Morning News, Wilmington, DE, June 30, 1884: A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett, is an uneventful narrative of New England life. Adeline Thatcher was one of those New England girls who are born with a distinct longing for a larger, freer life.

She left the home farm and went to one of the more considerable New England towns, became a dressmaker, married a young physician whose family prided itself upon its age and position, quarreled with the members of this family, and upon her husband’s sudden death fled with her baby to her old home, where she arrived just in time to die. It is the life of this baby girl, thus left wit her old grandmother, that occupies these pages.

Deciding to become a physician

A good country physician, who lived in the neighboring village, exercised joint moral guardianship with the grandmother over the child, and when the grandmother died the little girl was taken into his home and was educated under his wise and loving direction. Finally, when the question of her future presses upon her for settlement, she decides, not rashly nor suddenly, but as a natural consequence of many preceding circumstances, to become a physician.

Afterward she visits her father’s family, is there beset with the question of love and household life, but after some reflection and without struggle adheres to her original purpose, for the execution of which she is now fairly well trained.

A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett on Amazon

How women rightfully become physicians

This is the story. It is not an argument going to show that certain women ought to become physicians; it is rather an explanation of how women now and then rightfully do become physicians. But the charm of the book lies in the manner of doing it rather than in the thing done.

The New England farm life; the unambitious, self-contained and thoughtful life of the good doctor; the quaint, prim, and yet cheery society of old Dunport, with its delightful contrasts of home-staying, methodical women and ocean-bred, roomy-minded men; the growth of the little girl under social conditions which are in fact hard and narrow into a broad-minded, generous, resolute woman, solely through the paternal protection and intellectual companionship of the old doctor; these are the pictures and delineations of life that make the book vivid and real.

Sketches of New England peculiarities

The little episode of the evening passed in Mr. Martin Dyer’s kitchen by the brothers Jake and Martin, when their ancient prejudice led them to take down the stove and bring the old fireplace again into use, upon the exculpatory plea that the stove ought to be ready “to be carried to the corners in the morning to be exchanged or repaired,” and that “it was well to keep out the damp,” is a refreshingly quaint and genuine and humorous picture of New England peculiarities; and Marilla, the antique “girl” of Dr. Leslie’s household service that is fast disappearing, but which will always be respected by those who can perceive the actual obedience and tried fidelity underlying its unimportant assumptions of family equality.

It is these sympathetic and accurate delineations of New England life that have given Miss Jewett her reputation, and in this longer story we still find that the greater charm resides in her appreciation of and capacity to reproduce essential features in the unique and fruitful civilization of rural New England.

See also: The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

More about A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Full text on American Literature
Audio version on Librivox

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The Death of Emily Brontë

Though Emily Brontë (1818 – 1848), the British author and poet, only lived to age thirty, she left the classic novel Wuthering Height, which was to be her legacy. The sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë, she was the fifth child born to Maria Branwell Brontë and Reverend Patrick Brontë.

In many ways, Emily was a more enigmatic figure than her sisters. An 1885 article in the Chicago Tribune stated that “Emily Brontë was perhaps the most original of the Brontë children in character; and it is thought by many that she was possessed of an even more striking genius than Charlotte. She was of a peculiarly reserved nature, and never during her life made any friend outside her family.” 

An 1883 biography, Emily Brontë, by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson paints a vivid portrait of Emily’s final illness and death from tuberculosis (then called consumption). Their brother Branwell had died just three months earlier (two other Brontë sisters had died in childhood), and Anne would succumb to tuberculosis about six months later, leaving Charlotte as the only surviving Brontë sibling. She too wasn’t destined for a long life.

Here’s a somewhat abbreviated portion of the chapter on the death of Emily Brontë following her illness. To read the chapter in its entirety, follow the link at the end.

An alarming cough

Already by the 29th of October of this melancholy year of 1848 Emily’s cough and cold had made such progress as to alarm her careful elder sister. Before Branwell’s death she had been, to all appearance, the one strong member of a delicate family. By the side of fragile Anne (already, did they but know it, advanced in tubercular consumption), of shattered Branwell, of Charlotte, ever nervous and ailing, this tall, muscular Emily had appeared a tower of strength.

Working early and late, seldom tired and never complaining, finding her best relaxation in long, rough walks on the moors, she seemed unlikely to give them any poignant anxiety. But the seeds of phthisis lay deep down beneath this fair show of life and strength; the shock of sorrow which she experienced for her brother’s death developed them with alarming rapidity.

The weariness of absence had always proved too much for Emily’s strength. Away from home we have seen how she pined and sickened. Exile made her thin and wan, menaced the very springs of life. And now she must endure an inevitable and unending absence, an exile from which there could be no return.

The strain was too tight, the wrench too sharp: Emily could not bear it and live. In such a loss as hers, bereaved of a helpless sufferer, the mourning of those who remain is embittered and quickened a hundred times a day when the blank minutes come round for which the customary duties are missing, when the unwelcome leisure hangs round the weary soul like a shapeless and encumbering garment. It was Emily who had chiefly devoted herself to Branwell. He being dead, the motive of her life seemed gone.

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Emily thought herself hardy

Had she been stronger, had she been more careful of herself at the beginning of her illness, she would doubtless have recovered, and we shall never know the difference in our literature which a little precaution might have made. But Emily was accustomed to consider herself hardy; she was so used to wait upon others that to lie down and be waited on would have appeared to her ignominious and absurd. Both her independence and her unselfishness made her very chary of giving trouble.

It is, moreover, extremely probable that she never realized the extent of her own illness; consumption is seldom a malady that despairs; attacking the body it leaves the spirit free, the spirit which cannot realize a danger by which it is not injured. A little later on when it was Anne’s turn to suffer, she is choosing her spring bonnet four days before her death. Which of us does not remember some such pathetic tale of the heart-wringing, vain confidence of those far gone in phthisis, who bear on their faces the marks of death for all eyes but their own to read?

Charlotte is worried

To those who look on, there is no worse agony than to watch the brave bearing of these others unconscious of the sudden grave at their feet. Charlotte and Anne looked on and trembled. On the 29th of October, Charlotte, still delicate from the bilious fever which had prostrated her on the day of Branwell’s death, writes these words already full of foreboding: “I feel much more uneasy about my sister than myself just now. Emily’s cold and cough are very obstinate. I fear she has pain in her chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in her breathing when she has moved at all quickly. She looks very thin and pale. Her reserved nature occasions me great uneasiness of mind. It is useless to question her; you get no answer. It is still more useless to recommend remedies; they are never adopted.”

It was, in fact, an acute inflammation of the lungs which this unfortunate sufferer was trying to subdue by force of courage. To persons of strong will it is difficult to realise that their disease is not in their own control. To be ill, is with them an act of acquiescence; they have consented to the demands of their feeble body. When necessity demands the sacrifice, it seems to them so easy to deny themselves the rest, the indulgence. They set their will against their weakness and mean to conquer. They will not give up.

A vain struggle

Emily would not give up. She felt herself doubly necessary to the household in this hour of trial. Charlotte was still very weak and ailing. Anne, her dear little sister, was unusually delicate and frail. Even her father had not quite escaped. That she, Emily, who had always been relied upon for strength and courage and endurance, should show herself unworthy of the trust when she was most sorely needed; that she, so inclined to take all duties on herself, so necessary to the daily management of the house, should throw up her charge in this moment of trial, cast away her arms in the moment of battle, and give her fellow-sufferers the extra burden of her weakness; such a thing was impossible to her.

So the vain struggle went on. She would resign no one of her duties, and it was not till within the last weeks of her life that she would so much as suffer the servant to rise before her in the morning and take the early work. She would not endure to hear of remedies; declaring that she was not ill, that she would soon be well, in the pathetic self-delusion of high-spirited weakness.

And Charlotte and Anne, for whose sake she made this sacrifice, suffered terribly thereby. Willingly, thankfully would they have taken all her duties upon them; they burned to be up and doing. But—seeing how weak she was—they dare not cross her; they had to sit still and endure to see her labour for their comfort with faltering and death-cold hands  …

“No poisoning doctor” should come near

… “No poisoning doctor” should come near her, Emily declared with the irritability of her disease. It was an insult to her will, her resolute endeavours. She was not, would not, be ill, and could therefore need no cure. Perhaps she felt, deep in her heart, the conviction that her complaint was mortal; that a delay in the sentence was all that care and skill could give; for she had seen Maria and Elizabeth fade and die, and only lately the physicians had not saved her brother.

But Charlotte, naturally, did not feel the same. Unknown to Emily, she wrote to a great London doctor drawing up a statement of the case and symptoms as minute and careful as she could give. But either this diagnosis by guesswork was too imperfect, or the physician saw that there was no hope; for his opinion was expressed too obscurely to be of any use. He sent a bottle of medicine, but Emily would not take it.

A period of hope and fear

December came, and still the wondering, anxious sisters knew not what to think. By this time Mr. Brontë also had perceived the danger of Emily’s state, and he was very anxious. Yet she still denied that she was ill with anything more grave than a passing weakness; and the pain in her side and chest appeared to diminish.

Sometimes the little household was tempted to take her at her word, and believe that soon, with the spring, she would recover; and then, hearing her cough, listening to the gasping breath with which she climbed the short staircase, looking on the extreme emaciation of her form, the wasted hands, the hollow eyes, their hearts would suddenly fail. Life was a daily contradiction of hope and fear.

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Emily still doing for herself and others

The days drew on towards Christmas; it was already the middle of December, and still Emily was about the house, able to wait upon herself, to sew for the others, to take an active share in the duties of the day. She always fed the dogs herself. One Monday evening, it must have been about the 14th of December, she rose as usual to give the creatures their supper. She got up, walking slowly, holding out in her thin hands an apronful of broken meat and bread.

But when she reached the flagged passage the cold took her; she staggered on the uneven pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, who had been sadly following her, unseen, came forwards much alarmed and begged her to desist; but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss and Keeper their last supper from her hands.

A turn for the worse

The next morning she was worse. Before her waking, her watching sisters heard the low, unconscious moaning that tells of suffering continued even in sleep; and they feared for what the coming year might hold in store. Of the nearness of the end they did not dream. Charlotte had been out over the moors, searching every glen and hollow for a sprig of heather, however pale and dry, to take to her moor-loving sister. But Emily looked on the flower laid on her pillow with indifferent eyes. She was already estranged and alienate from life.

Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing herself alone, and doing everything for herself. A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat on the hearth to comb her hair. She was thinner than ever now — the tall, loose-jointed “slinky” girl — her hair in its plenteous dark abundance was all of her that was not marked by the branding finger of death. She sat on the hearth combing her long brown hair. But soon the comb slipped from her feeble grasp into the cinders.

She, the intrepid, active Emily, watched it burn and smoulder, too weak to lift it, while the nauseous, hateful odour of burnt bone rose into her face. At last the servant came in: “Martha,” she said, “my comb’s down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up.”

I have seen that old, broken comb, with a large piece burned out of it; and have thought it, I own, more pathetic than the bones of the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne, or the time-blackened Holy Face of Lucca. Sad, chance confession of human weakness; mournful counterpart of that chainless soul which to the end maintained its fortitude and rebellion. The flesh is weak. Since I saw that relic, the strenuous verse of Emily Brontë’s last poem has seemed to me far more heroic, far more moving; remembering in what clinging and prisoning garments that free spirit was confined.

The flesh was weak, but Emily would grant it no indulgence. She finished her dressing, and came very slowly, with dizzy head and tottering steps, downstairs into the little bare parlour where Anne was working and Charlotte writing a letter.

Emily took up some work and tried to sew. Her catching breath, her drawn and altered face were ominous of the end. But still a little hope flickered in those sisterly hearts. “She grows daily weaker,” wrote Charlotte, on that memorable Tuesday morning; seeing surely no portent that this—this! was to be the last of the days and the hours of her weakness.

The chord of life snapped

The morning drew on to noon, and Emily grew worse. She could no longer speak, but—gasping in a husky whisper—she said: “If you will send for a doctor. I will see him now!” Alas, it was too late. The shortness of breath and rending pain increased; even Emily could no longer conceal them. Towards two o’clock her sisters begged her, in an agony, to let them put her to bed. “No, no,” she cried; tormented with the feverish restlessness that comes before the last, most quiet peace. She tried to rise, leaning with one hand upon the sofa. And thus the chord of life snapped. She was dead.

She was twenty-nine years old. They buried her, a few days after, under the church pavement; under the slab of stone where their mother lay, and Maria and Elizabeth and Branwell …

They followed her to her grave—her old father, Charlotte, the dying Anne; and as they left the doors, they were joined by another mourner, Keeper, Emily’s dog. He walked in front of all, first in the rank of mourners; and perhaps no other creature had known the dead woman quite so well.

“We feel she is at peace”

When they had lain her to sleep in the dark, airless vault under the church, and when they had crossed the bleak churchyard, and had entered the empty house again, Keeper went straight to the door of the room where his mistress used to sleep, and lay down across the threshold. There he howled piteously for many days; knowing not that no lamentations could wake her any more. Over the little parlor below a great calm had settled.

“Why should we be otherwise than calm,” says Charlotte, writing to her friend on the 21st of December. “The anguish of seeing her suffer is over; the spectacle of the pains of death is gone by; the funeral day is past. We feel she is at peace. No need now to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not feel them.”

(This is an edited version of Chapter 18 of Emily Brontë by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson. Here is the chapter in full.)

Emily Brontë page on Amazon

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