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.
Search "A Woman in Armor" by CATHERWOOD, MARY HARTWELL (MRS. JAMES STEELE): 1847-1902. in:
Close X - The Dogberry Bunch. Boston,
1879.
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Close X - Old Caravan Days including Over Indiana
Roads. Boston. 1880.
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Roads" by CATHERWOOD, MARY HARTWELL (MRS. JAMES STEELE): 1847-1902. in:
Close X - Craque-O'-Doom.
Philadelphia, 1881.
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Close X - Rocky Fork. Boston, 1882.
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Close X - The Secrets at Roseladies. Boston, 1886.
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Close X - The Romance of Dollard. New
York, 1889.
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Close X - The Story of Tonty. Chicago,
1890.
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Close X - The Lady of Fort St. John.
Boston, 1891.
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Close X - Old Kaskaskia. Boston, 1893.
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Close X - The White Islander. New York, 1893.
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Close X - The Chase of Saint-Castin and Other Stories of the French in
the New World. Boston, 1894.
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the New World" by CATHERWOOD, MARY HARTWELL (MRS. JAMES STEELE): 1847-1902. in:
Close X - The Days of Jeanne D'Arc. New
York, 1897.
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Close X - The Spirit of an Illinois Town, and The Little Renault: Two
Stories of Illinois at Different Periods.
Boston, 1897.
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Stories of Illinois at Different Periods" by CATHERWOOD, MARY HARTWELL (MRS. JAMES STEELE): 1847-1902. in:
Close X - Bony and Ban, the Story of a Printing Venture.
Boston, 1898.
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Close X - Heroes of the Middle West.
Boston, 1898.
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Close X - Mackinac and Lake Stories. New
York, 1899.
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Close X - The Queen of the Swamp and Other Plain Americans.
Boston, 1899.
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Close X - Spanish Peggy. Chicago, 1899.
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Close X - Lazarre. Indianapolis, 1901.
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