Miss Murfree's New Book
[In the following review of Murfree's The Bushwhackers, and Other Stories, the critic says that a less-known author might not have been able to publish such ordinary stories.]
MISS MURFREE'S NEW BOOK
Charles Egbert Craddock is the pen name of a lady who writes many interesting stories, and it is only fair to say that most of them are more interesting than those which go to make up the present volume. Nevertheless these are a fairly good lot, as the auctioneers would put it. The title of the volume [The Bushwhackers, and Other Stories] is taken from a story in which it must be said that the “Bushwhackers” do not play a very conspicuous part. Perhaps the author has been going to the theatre and has learned that the name of a play is not always indissolubly associated with the subject matter. This acceptance of a side issue as a suggestion for a title is, however, more frequently met with in the profession which always has the billboard in mind than in that which has only the newspaper advertisement to consider.
“The Bushwhackers” is a dialect story. The author having made a reputation as a writer of tales of the Tennessee mountains, must perforce remain forever among those who say “we-uns” and “you-uns.” The hero of this little tale talks in a manner which will delight all those who find no comfort in plain English. He would probably prove to be a highly uninteresting youth in real life, but in this tale he is a character study, and therefore he is to be accepted as something out of the ordinary. He is full of ambition to go to the war and serve as a cavalryman. He accomplishes his purpose, and loses his arm through the treachery of one of his comrades. He afterward saves this same fellow when he is caught in a tight place. That is what makes him a hero. The heroine is a pale and indefinite figure, who serves no good purpose in the tale except to refuse to admire a man with one arm, and afterward to take pity on him and accept him. This is a truly feminine performance, but it is not at all new in fiction.
The story is written in a very plain and unvarnished style. Indeed, it would probably be regarded as a thin and weak style if it had been put forth by one of the unknown. But a famous author may do many things which a young and yet uncelebrated one would not dare to think of attempting. Here is a specimen of the author's descriptive writing as shown in the present volume.
There was a fine panorama once in the twilight when a battery on the heights shelled the woods in the valley, and tiny white clouds, with hearts of darting fire described swift aerial curves, the fuses burning brightly against the bland blue sky, ere that supreme moment of explosion when the bursting fragments hurtled wildly through the air.
It is not kind of an author to startle a reader by such an abrupt transition from the figurative to the literal. How is the reader to know from anything which the author says that the author is aware of the great natural truth that clouds do not have fuses? And then that wild hurtling of fragments through the air has been done to death by the newspaper correspondents. The Spanish war brought out all those old familiar formulas which had rested since the civil war Perhaps, as the author now under discussion was writing about the civil war, she had the right to use the expressions of the time.
The other stories in this volume are entitled “The Panther of Jolton's Ridge” and “The Exploit of Choolah, the Chickasaw.” Of these two the second is the stronger tale. The first lacks directness of purpose and celerity of action. The second is stronger in the matter of character delineation. In style the three stories are much the same, and they are interesting without being striking. If the author was not already a person of repute, these tales would not make her so.
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