Doctor Sevier

by George Washington Cable

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Hardcover

First published January 1, 1882

About the author

George Washington Cable was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana.

Reviews

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the years immediately before the American Civil War, a widowed doctor of New Orleans takes an interest in a struggling couple with a secret past. They call themselves John and Mary Richlin and claim to come from Milwaukee, but Dr Sevier isn't fooled by that.

John Richlin, obviously a gentleman in disguise, finds it hard to find work, dragging his young wife down with him into poverty. The doctor feels sorry for them and lends assistance, though his pity is of an exasperated and testy kind, all 'frowning good intention'.

George Washington Cable was a friend of Mark Twain and had similarly liberal views towards the race question for his time and place, so much so that he had to up sticks and move to the North to avoid persecution. Today he is considered one of the original leading lights of southern realist fiction.

As idiosyncratic and enjoyable as Dr. Sevier was in places, I can only imagine that it is not considered amongst his best works. A meandering, almost plotless tale of poverty and charity, the multiracial support cast are lively but the leads are rather dull and uninteresting.

Those superior secondary characters include a comedy creole called Narcisse, an enterprising Italian and a stolid German baker, all three with outrageous English accents which Cable has a lot of fun interpreting into print, but that you might find something of a challenge to decipher!

The Civil War does finally intrude into the novel's final stages, but only as a backdrop.

[Humphrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dr. Sevier is a curious book; it does have moments when it is interesting, but unfortunately these don't really come until the second half of the novel. The first half traces the continual failure of its protagonist to obtain stable work befitting of his gentility. Imagine the apartment search at the beginning of Howells' A Hazard of New Fortunes, but twice as long, half as descriptive, and half as interesting. From about the 2/5ths point onward, the novel becomes more explicitly about the question of charity and benevolence: how can it be done effectively, what kind of interpersonal / societal relationships does it require or promote, and what role does it play in the health of one's soul? To this end, there are sequences involving prison (though to say the novel is "about" prison reform, as some odd summaries online suggest, is way off), the breakout of a deadly fever, and finally the Civil War. The last fifth or so of the novel takes place during the war and features several scenes that are interesting historically (early-war excitement, war conditions on the home front, the fall of New Orleans) or aesthetically (as Cable attempts to navigate a balance between pro-South and pro-Union positions, historical revision and historical accuracy, nostalgia and present-mindedness). The unfortunate thing remains that the novel takes 200 pages of my 470 page edition to get started, and much of this initial material feels redundant.

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange novel about life in New Orleans just before and during the Civil War. While the title is “Dr. Sevier” it is really about a gentle, loving couple that he helps—John and Mary Richling. One has rebelled against his rich, slave-owning family and the other is a simple, sweet girl from Milwaukee. The couple move to the city in 1858 to make their way. John is not a practical or highly-skilled man and struggles with finding steady work, to the point of near starvation, saved only by the generosity of the Dr. Sevier. The couple are separated just before the war, and, once the war begins, Mary finds out her husband is sick and struggles to get back to him through checkpoints and battlefields. Cable’s plot is paper-thin, and the book is altogether too long for the action it contains (although the prison and war sections are compelling). What he is really interested in is creating a snapshot of a city with colorful characters and dialogue. He tries his hand at creating Dickensian Irish, German, Italian, and Creole characters who ultimately have little impact on the main plot. While the book is mostly entertaining and well written, it is more valuable today as a remarkable document of the city in the 1850’s and 60’s.