- Title:
- The Secrets at Roseladies
- Author:
- Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 1847-1902
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CATHERWOOD, MARY HARTWELL (MRS. JAMES STEELE): 1847-1902.
Any history of Middle Western literature must include mention of the prolific writer, Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood. Although she was born in Ohio (Dec. 16, 1847), was a resident of Indiana only from 1877 to 1882, and lived thereafter mainly in Hoopeston and Chicago, Ill., Mrs. Catherwood became during her Hoosier years an intimate and influential part of the literary circle centering in Indianapolis and she kept a close relationship with it all the rest of her life. In her writing, although she derived contemporary fame chiefly from a series of popular but rather unsubstantial historical romances produced between 1888 and 1902, she turned out two groups of regional short stories that have won her a permanent place in American local color literature. The first group, written largely during her Indiana years, memorializes the corn belt from central Ohio west to the Illinois prairies. The second, written in the Nineties, dealt with the French-border country from Mackinac to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Mrs. Catherwood was born in Luray, Licking County, O. When she was about ten, the family migrated to Milford, Iroquois County, Ill., where the father, Dr. Marcus Hartwell, died in 1857 and the mother, Phoebe Thompson Hartwell, in 1858. The three orphaned children, of whom Mary was the oldest, returned to Ohio where they were reared by the maternal grandparents in Hebron. Autobiographical reflections of the early trip on the National Road through Ohio and Indiana to Illinois are to be found in Old Caravan Days and On Indiana Roads, juveniles published in 1880. Details of an unhappy girlhood in an Ohio village at the intersection of the National Road and the Ohio Canal fill the background of her novel Craque-O'-Doom, written in Indianapolis and published in 1881.
At fourteen she was teaching country schools, and two years later she was publishing her first poetry and stories in the Newark, O., NORTH AMERICAN. In 1865 she entered the Granville, O., Female College and completed a four-year course in three, graduating in 1868. She was "the first important woman writer of any prominence in American literary ranks to acquire a college education," Prof. Fred Lewis Pattee points out, "graduating not in the East, as one might suppose, but from a new college in the new West." Pattee also notes that she was the first woman novelist of the period born west of the Alleghenies. It can be added that in her self-supported struggle toward a literary career and national recognition she was the pioneer woman writer of the Middle West.
From 1868 until 1874, she taught schools in Granville, O., and in Danville, Ill. At the latter place in 1871, she won a $100 prize for a short story in WOOD'S HOUSEHOLD MAGAZINE and shortly afterward became a regular contributor to WOOD'S and various other popular periodicals.
These successes led her in 1874 to give up teaching entirely for free-lance writing, first in Newburgh, N. Y. (1874-1875), then in Cincinnati (1875-1877). A voluminous output of pot-boilers during this period included her first novel, A Woman in Armor (1875) first serialized in HEARTH AND HOME. This writing was anything but distinctive, but she managed to support herself by it most of the time from 1874 to 1877, not a common accomplishment for young, unknown free-lance women writers in the Seventies.
In December, 1877, she married James Steele Catherwood of Hoopeston and went to live over the railway station (still standing) in Oakford (Fairfield), Howard County, Ind. Released from the pressure of self-support, she began taking stock of Middle Western life and translating it into sketches, poems, and stories for various Indiana papers. Notably literary conscious in these decades, Indiana's newspapers were soon aware of her and her writing. There were two important results: a long and stimulating acquaintance with James Whitcomb Riley and the perfection of Mrs. Catherwood's style in her first significant, nationally-recognized local color writing.
Mrs. Catherwood and Riley met in Kokomo in February, 1879. Riley, whose work had not yet won him hope of literary success, was going through a period of deep discouragement. Mrs. Catherwood had given up thoughts of a literary career for married life in an isolated country village and was not completely happy with the results. Friendship warmed quickly and there was a mutually inspired burst of creative work. Among other writing they were collaborating in 1879 on The Whittleford Letters, a romance based upon the lives of two young writers whose careers and meeting very closely resembled their own. The project was never completed, chiefly, Mrs. Catherwood has said, because the substance of the fictional romance suddenly became too real for both.
In December, 1879, the Catherwoods moved to Indianapolis. The month before, Riley had taken a permanent post on the JOURNAL. Mrs. Catherwood became at once an intimate part of the city's literary group and from October, 1880, until her removal to Hoopeston in 1882 was drama critic for and regular contributor to George C. Harding'sSATURDAY REVIEW.
Her production during these Indianapolis months was enormous. In addition to her reviews, she turned out three book-length serials (including her second novel, Craque-O'-Doom, named for a poem by Riley), two book-length and numerous shorter juveniles, at least seven short stories including some of her finest local color narratives, and a large miscellany.
Now as always she was writing too much, but she was perfecting her best skills. Such stories as The Career of a Prairie Farmer (LIPPINCOTT'S, June, 1880) describing life on Illinois farms, Mallston's Youngest (LIPPINCOTT'S, Aug., 1880), utilizing her recent background in Oakford, Serena (ATLANTIC, June, 1882) and Queen of the Swamp (HARPER'S,Dec., 1882), both of the latter giving scenes from her girlhood region in Ohio, mark a culmination of her attempts to record realistic details of rural life in the Middle West. Riley, too, it is interesting to note, was just on the verge of recognition.
From 1882 until 1899, Mrs. Catherwood lived in Hoopeston. Her greatest fame began in 1888 with the publication of The Romance of Dollard, an historical novel based upon old French-American themes popularized by the writings of Francis Parkman. Both the manuscript and the writer were introduced to Richard Watson Gilder, CENTURY'S editor, by letters from Riley who by now had full access to Eastern editorial attention. The Story of Tonty, The Lady of Fort St. John, and a long line of other historical romances followed, most of which were serialized first in either the CENTURY, HARPER'S, or the ATLANTIC.
Mrs. Catherwood's forte was in recording a multitude of realistic human-interest details of manners, customs, speech, and every-day incidents. On the other hand, she was never a skillful contriver of plots, a weakness that, together with her tendency toward extremes of romantic escape, made her novels too thin for any continuing attention today.
Within the compressed scope of the short story, however, she was able to integrate form and color with highly artistic results. Her successes with corn-belt material in the Eighties were matched in the Nineties by other craftsmanlike work with French-border themes, in such fine tales as The Windigo (ATLANTIC, Apr., 1894) and The Mothers of Honoré (HARPER'S, June, 1899). Various of these French-border short stories have been the most widely reprinted of her works.
A few of her better earlier cornlands tales Mrs. Catherwood revived in The Queen of the Swamp and Other Plain Americans in 1899. But some of the finest of her early Middle Western local color lies uncollected in the magazines of the Eighteen-eighties. The best of her French-border tales Mrs. Catherwood collected in The Chase of Saint-Castin and Other Stories (1894) and Mackinac and Lake Stories (1899).
Mrs. Catherwood's personal relationships with Middle Western authors were many and vital. At Indianapolis in 1886, for example, she helped organize, with Riley, Maurice Thompson, and others, the Western Association of Writers and was active in the work of this influential organization the rest of her life.
After 1890, Mrs. Catherwood traveled much–to Mackinac Island for her summers, to French Canada, and in 1891 and 1894 to Europe, the latter trip to gather material for her fictional life of Jeanne d'Arc published in 1897.
From 1899 until her death (Dec. 26, 1902), she resided in Chicago. Her writing here, more voluminous than ever, included her most popular success Lazarre, a historical romance based upon the career of Eleazar Williams, the supposed "Lost Dauphin." Its popularity was enhanced by a stage version with Otis Skinner in the leading role. Its chief interest today, however, lies in an episodic contribution that it has made to the nationally-accepted folk myth of Johnny Appleseed.
Almost completely forgotten for a time, the permanent values in Mrs. Catherwood's short tales were first pointed out by Prof. Pattee in 1915. Now, no representative collection of American local color stories is considered complete without some of her work.
By Robert Price, Professor of English at Otterbein College, O.
- A Woman in Armor. New York,
1875.
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Close X - The Dogberry Bunch. Boston,
1879.
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Roads. Boston. 1880.
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Philadelphia, 1881.
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Close X - The Secrets at Roseladies. Boston, 1886.
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York, 1889.
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1890.
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Boston, 1891.
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the New World. Boston, 1894.
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Close X - The Spirit of an Illinois Town, and The Little Renault: Two
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Boston, 1897.
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Boston, 1898.
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Boston, 1898.
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- A Woman in Armor. New York,
1875.
- Publication Year:
- 1888
- Source:
- Boston: D Lothrop Company, 1888.
- Bookmark:
- https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/inauthors/VAA3886
THE SECRETS
AT ROSELADIES
BYMARY HARTWELl CATHERWOOD
Author of
Dogberry
Bunch
Rocky Fort
Old Caravan Days
and
others
ILLUSTRATIONS BY W A ROGERS
BOSTON
D LOTHROP COMPANY
FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
COPYRIGHT, 1888
BY
D. LOTHROP COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
- I. THE WHIRLING TABLE 9
- II. THE UNITED DIGGERS 21
- III. COUSIN SARA'S AWFUL SECRET 32
- IV. A RIVER HOUSE 45
- V. THE CATNIP-PIPE AND ITS WITNESS 53
- VI. A CHILL 58
- VII. BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST 70
- VIII. ANOTHER DISGRACEFUL THING 79
- IX. AUNT JANE 97
- X. SISTER SETS FORTH 105
- XI. WHILE GRASS GROWS AND WATER RUNS 115
- XII. A SILENT SAVAGE AND A WAR-WHOOP 126
- XIII. EIGHT BOYLESS LEGS 137
- XIV. MORE DISGRACEFUL THINGS 146
- XV. CAPTIVES 154
- XVI. TRIAL OF THE MOUND-DIGGERS 160
- XVII. THE LAST DAY ON THE WABASH 174
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
- "That mound," said Dan, "is the Shawnee buryin' mound" Frontis.
- Cousin Sarah looked hurriedly round the room 41
- Uncle Roseladies is absent-minded . . . 87
- "Lay low!" 121
- Echoes answered her 151
- "O, Uncle Roseldies! O, you've come after us!" 161
