The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States

  IV

  CHARLES W. CHESNUTT

  Charles Waddell Chesnutt, the best known novelist and short story writerof the race, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, June 20, 1858. At the age ofsixteen he began to teach in the public schools of North Carolina, fromwhich state his parents had gone to Cleveland; and at the age oftwenty-three he became principal of the State Normal School atFayetteville. In 1883 he left the South, engaging for a short while innewspaper work in New York City, but going soon to Cleveland, where heworked as a stenographer. He was admitted to the bar in 1887.

  While in North Carolina Mr. Chesnutt studied to good purpose thedialect, manners, and superstitions of the Negro people of the state. In1887 he began in the _Atlantic Monthly_ the series of stories which wasafterwards brought together in the volume entitled, "The ConjureWoman." This book was published by the Houghton Mifflin Co., the firmwhich published also Mr. Chesnutt's other collection of stories and thefirst two of his three novels. "The Wife of his Youth, and Other Storiesof the Color-Line" appeared in 1899. In the same year appeared a compactbiography of Frederick Douglass, a contribution to the BeaconBiographies of Eminent Americans. Three novels have since appeared, asfollows: "The House Behind the Cedars" (1900); "The Marrow of Tradition"(1901); and "The Colonel's Dream" (1905).

  Mr. Chesnutt's short stories are not all of the same degree ofexcellence, but the best ones show that he is fully master of the shortstory as a literary form. One of the best technically is "The Bouquet."This is a story of the devotion of a little Negro girl to her whiteteacher, and shows clearly how the force of Southern prejudice mightforbid the expression of simple love not only in a representative home,but even when the object of the devotion is borne to the cemetery. "TheSheriff's Children" is a tragic tale of the relations of a white fatherwith his illegitimate colored son. Most famous of all these stories,however, is "The Wife of his Youth," a simple work of art of greatintensity. It is a tale of a very fair colored man who, just before theCivil War, by the aid of his Negro wife, makes his way from slavery inMissouri to freedom in a Northern city, Groveland [Cleveland?]. Afterthe years have brought to him business success and culture, and he hasbecome the acknowledged leader of his social circle and the prospectivehusband of a very attractive young widow, his wife suddenly appears onthe scene. The story ends with Mr. Ryder's acknowledging before acompany of guests the wife of his youth. Such stories as these, eachsetting forth a certain problem and working it out to its logicalconclusion, reflect great credit upon the literary skill of the writer.

  CHARLES W. CHESNUTT]

  Of the novels, "The House Behind the Cedars" is commonly given firstplace. In the story of the heroine, Rena Walden, are treated some of themost subtle and searching questions raised by the color-line. Rena issought in love by three men, George Tryon, a white man, whose love failswhen put to the test; Jeff Wain, a coarse and brutal mulatto, and FrankFowler, a devoted young Negro, who makes every sacrifice demanded bylove. The novel, especially in its last pages, moves with an intensitythat is an unmistakable sign of power. It is Mr. Chesnutt's mostsustained treatment of the subject for which he has become best known,that is, the delicate and tragic situation of those who live on theborder-line of the races; and it is the best work of fiction yet writtenby a member of the race in America. In "The Marrow of Tradition" themain theme is the relations of two women, one white and one colored,whose father, the same white man, had in time been married to the motherof each. The novel touches upon almost every phase of the Negro Problem.It is a powerful plea, but perhaps too much a novel of purpose tosatisfy the highest standards of art. The Wellington of the story isvery evidently Wilmington, N. C., and the book was written immediatelyafter the race troubles in that city in 1898. "The Colonel's Dream" is asad story of the failure of high ideals. Colonel Henry French is a manwho, born in the South, achieves success in New York and returns to hisold home for a little vacation, only to find himself face to face withall the problems that one meets in a backward Southern town. "He dreamedof a regenerated South, filled with thriving industries, and throngedwith a prosperous and happy people, where every man, having enough forhis needs, was willing that every other man should have the same; wherelaw and order should prevail unquestioned, and where every man couldenter, through the golden door of hope, the field of opportunity, wherelay the prizes of life, which all might have an equal chance to win orlose." Becoming interested in the injustice visited upon the Negroes inthe courts, and in the employment of white children in the cotton-mills,Colonel French encounters opposition to his benevolent plans, oppositionwhich finally sends him back to New York defeated. Mr. Chesnutt writesin simple, clear English, and his methods might well be studied byyounger writers who desire to treat, in the guise of fiction, the manysearching questions that one meets to-day in the life of the South.