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Indiana Authors and their books, 1816-1980.
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page: 312[View Page: 312]

TARKINGTON, NEWTON BOOTH: 1869-1946.

Of all writers Booth Tarkington most nearly interpreted the American scene from the beginning of this century through the Twenties as the average American saw it.

Tarkington's interest lay in the people whom he and most other Americans knew well. He was at his best on North Meridian Street (his "National Avenue") in Indianapolis , or with the people who had prospered to a chill eminence above that thoroughfare, or, as in the case of the family of Alice Adams, had slipped below it. He did well, too, on the streets neighboring to Meridian and progressively less impressive, and he knew what went on in the residential streets which fed the ebony glitter of the colored folks' main-stem, Indiana Avenue.

Mostly, though, he knew the Indiana middle class and he put them down, in his notably careful and beautiful script, for future generations and for the world at large to meet. They were by no means all nice people; there was always the leavening of Alice Adams' bootlegging brother, the nastiness of some of the Magnificent Ambersons, but the proportion of good, near-good, wishfully-good and pure bad was about right. There was neither the high romance of George Barr McCutcheon nor the grimy realism of Theodore Dreiser: Tarkington's people lived.

Every town in American had its Magnificent Ambersons, and a doting Adams mother and a frustrated Adams daughter kept up a pretense of gentility in most American towns and cities. Penrod was easily recognizable to any citizen who was a boy in Penrod's day, and to most parents of any age, there were half a dozen prototypes of The Gentleman from Indiana. There have been Willie Baxters ever since boys began to reach the shaving age, and Willies will always be with us as long as civilization maintains.

Tarkington , to average citizens, was not only a great Indiana author, but to many he will always be the great page: 313[View Page 313] Indiana author, regardless of the manifestos which critics may issue on the literary virtues of Dreiser and the others.

Newton Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis on July 29, 1869, into the very sort of background he wrote of best–comfortably prosperous middle class. His father was Judge John Stevenson Tarkington and his mother was Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. They named the baby for a distinguished uncle, Newton Booth, early governor of California .

Tarkington was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy for his college preparation and, upon graduation, he entered Purdue University. In spite of the genial companionship of George Ade and John T. McCutcheon, he transferred to Princeton after two years but left without a degree. He was active in Princeton literary and dramatic affairs. He also stood well in his classes, although he later said, "No doubt I imbibed some education there, though it seems to me that I tried to avoid that as much as possible." It was no matter–he was to receive academic honors enough in later life.

His first ambition was to become an illustrator: he made the old LIFE with a drawing in 1895 and then received thirty-one consecutive rejections. Thereafter he stuck to writing but with little more immediate encouragement. Finally a publishing house bought Cherry–and put it away among its other presumed errors in judgment–but the purchase price was paid. It was $2.50, and that sum, according to Tarkington, was the gross return from five years of writing. Publishing it after the establishment of Tarkington's fame, the buyer realized a handsome profit, even including storage charges.

Success was coming, however, and it was not far away. Having had no luck with short stories (even Monsieur Beaucaire had made the rounds and collected its share of rejection slips), he decided to try a novel. He laid it in Indiana , he peopled it with Indianians whom he knew, and The Gentleman from Indiana resulted. It was an immediate best-seller, and it remained near the top of the list for an amazing length of time.

Monsieur Beaucaire and other previously rejected manuscripts came out of Tarkington's desk drawer and were viewed in a different light by publishers. The young man leaped from a $1000 or so annual income (received from the rentals he had bought with his Uncle Newton Booth's bequest) to a total of $27,000 in 1900. In 1919 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature for The Magnificent Ambersons; he won it again with Alice Adams in 1922, and later the American Institute of Arts and Letters awarded him its medal for distinguished fiction.

Tarkington was always one to enjoy his living–at Purdue and at Princeton and, after he became a notable literary figure, in the spots in North America and Europe most likely to furnish entertainment. Between times, though, he returned to Indianapolis , even from the beloved summer home of his later years in Kennebunkport, Me. In his gaudy younger days, in his mellow and intelligently socially-conscious middle life and in his contented old age he was a Hoosier.

Tarkington did not always write great books, but he always wrote good ones. Writing, for him, was a very serious business–fifteen and sixteen hour stretches in his study with his meals sent in. Probably, as time goes on, it will be realized increasingly that the best of his efforts are important social documents, that the lightest of them have a Mark Twain quality of surviving freshness and that they are all good entertainment.

Tarkington was happy in his choice of male associates throughout his life. The friendship of Ade, the McCutcheons, Harry Leon Wilson, Julian Street, and all the others could make any life an enjoyable one. With women, however, he was less at home. He had the reputation at Princeton of being something of a wallflower in mixed company; perhaps those occasions furnished documentary material for the agonies of Willie Baxter and Ramsey Milholland.

His first wife was Laurel Louisa Fletcher, daughter of a highly successful Indianapolis banking family of whom recognizable portraits appear in Tarkington's writing. Their divorce was followed shortly and tragically by the death of their one daughter of pneumonia. His second wife, Susannah Robinson of Dayton, O., whom he married on Nov. 6, 1912, survived him. She was always interested in his writing and aided him in its continuance and development.

Tarkington's later years were plagued by ill health: by a heart ailment which brought orders to slow down and by an eye trouble which brought about almost complete blindness (although he made every effort to conceal the fact). In spite of the suffering from these disabilities, and even more from the inactivity they enforced, he kept up his interest in the affairs of the world. He maintained until the last an urbane and only slightly detached attitude toward the life to which he had contributed so much.

Booth Tarkington died at his Indianapolis home, 4270 North Meridian Street, on May 19, 1946.

Information from friends of Tarkington; newspapers and miscellaneous sources.

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